i     -me*     ! 

YOUNG-MRNS 
-  RFFKIRS  * 


CHARL6S 

R€YNOLDS 

BROWN 


Ov»*f 


LIBRARY 

OF  THE 

University  of  California. 


GIFT    OF 


>1^<?L/wLUq -X X.*^0*CW. 

Class 


YOUN&MRN'S 
-AFFAIRS  - 


CHARL6S 
R6YNOLDS 
BROWN      ^ 


SERIES  of  strong,  prac- 
tical talks  to  every  young 

1  about  the  things  which 

rest  him  most: 

Main  Purpose 
His  Intimates 
His  Books 

His  Money 
,  Recreations 
His  Wife 

His  Church 


€^e  goimg  jftau'g  affair 


The  Young  Man's 
Affairs 


BY 


CHARLES  REYNOLDS  BROWN 

AUTHOR   OF 

"THE    SOCIAL    MESSAGE    OF    THE    MODERN    PULPIT," 

*THE   MAIN   POINTS,"    "TWO   PARABLES,1'    AND 

"THE   STRANGE  WAYS   OF  GOD1' 


OF  T 

7ERSITY 

OF 


NEW    YORK 

THOMAS   Y.   CROWELL   &   CO. 

PUBLISHERS 


Copyright,  t909,  by  Thomas  Y.  Crorvell  Sf  (\>. 


l'ul.lished  September,  190U 


TITLES  OF  CHAPTERS 


I.  His  Main  Purpose  Page    3 

II.  His  Intimates  23 

III.  His  Books  45 

IV.  His  Money  69 
V.  His  Recreations  91 

VI.  His  Wife  115 

VII.  His  Church  139 


186721 


W  M*ln  putpottz 


[i] 


CHAPTER   FIRST 


f  i$  jttain  pmpozz 


OU  will  agree  with  me  at 
the  outset  that  no  man  is 
apt  to  arrive  unless  he  has 
a  fairly  distinct  idea  as  to 
where  he  is  going.  You 
can  steer  a  ship  that  is 
moving,  every  part  of  it  brought  under  the 
power  of  some  impelling  force — even  if  it  is 
headed  wrong  it  can  be  turned  around.  You 
cannot  do  anything  with  a  ship  that  is  drift- 
ing— it  simply  lies  in  the  trough  of  the  sea 
beaten  and  tossed.  You  can  do  almost  any- 
thing with  a  young  man  who  is  possessed  by 
a  purpose.  If  that  purpose  in  certain  par- 
ticulars is  a  mistaken  one,  he  can  be  faced 
about.  But  it  is  hard  to  do  anything  with 
those  human  derelicts  who  are  just  drifting 
along  waiting  to  see  what  will  happen  to 
them  instead  of  being  up  and  out  to  make 
things  happen  on  their  own  account.   In  this 

[3] 


C&e  gowns  Jftan'g  affair 

first  address  to  young  men,  therefore,  I  shall 
speak  of  the  vital  importance  of  a  definite 
purpose. 

The  real  purpose  organizes  the  various  ele- 
ments of  a  man's  life  for  effective  action.  A 
pile  of  steel  filings  and  shavings  lying  on  the 
floor  of  a  foundry  may  be  fine  in  quality, 
they  may  weigh  a  ton  when  put  upon  the 
scales,  but  unorganized  they  have  little  value. 
Organize  and  weld  them  into  a  shaft,  attach 
one  end  of  the  shaft  to  an  engine,  and  the 
other  to  a  screw  propeller,  and  it  will  send 
a  mighty  ocean  liner  from  New  York  to  Liv- 
erpool in  five  days.  Bring  all  those  bits  of 
steel  under  the  organizing  power  of  a  pur- 
pose and  they  become  effective.  In  like  man- 
ner a  mind,  a  heart,  a  soul,  is  nothing  more 
than  a  confused  heap  of  thoughts  and  wishes, 
impulses  and  desires,  longings  and  aspira- 
tions, until  by  the  power  of  a  purpose  all 
these  are  brought  into  unity  and  made  ef- 
fective in  their  thrust  toward  some  worthy 
fulfilment. 

More  than  that  the  very  fact  of  a  purpose, 

[4] 


Pss  jttam  puvpozz 


high  and  fine,  far-reaching  and  commanding, 
in  the  heart  of  a  man  exercises  a  potent  in- 
fluence upon  the  world  without.  David  Starr 
Jordan  likes  to  say,  "  The  world  makes  way 
for  the  man  who  knows  where  he  is  going." 
On  the  crowded  sidewalk  no  one  ever  thinks 
of  swerving  an  inch  for  the  dawdler  who  is 
just  sauntering  along  to  kill  time.  Everyone 
is  ready  to  give  half  the  sidewalk  or  more 
for  the  man  who  shows  by  his  look  and  bear- 
ing that  he  is  bound  somewhere  with  a  defi- 
nite purpose  in  mind.  You  will  find  that  the 
same  principle  holds  good  through  life — in 
the  busiest  bank,  in  the  largest  railroad  office, 
in  the  factories  which  turn  out  products  by 
the  trainload,  in  all  the  learned  professions, 
people  are  not  only  willing  but  eager  to  make 
room  for  the  man  with  a  purpose. 
I  am  not  disturbed,  therefore,  when  I  see 
young  men  consumed  with  impossible  ambi- 
tions, eaten  up  with  aspirations  which  may 
never  reach  fulfilment,  straining  every  nerve 
to  accomplish  what  may  not  be  worthy  of 
such  an  effort.    They  are  in  the  Freshman 

[5] 


C^e  gomtg  jEan'g  affair 


year,  and  long  before  they  reach  the  Senior 
class  in  this  big  University  we  call  human 
life,  they  will  be  straightened  out. 
I  am  troubled  at  the  sight  of  young  men  who 
have  no  definite  aims.  You  will  find  them  in 
every  country  town  sitting  around  the  rail- 
road station  to  watch  the  trains  come  in  and 
go  out,  or  talking  small  talk  through  the 
livelong  afternoon  in  a  grocery  store  because 
they  have  not  enough  strength  of  mind  to  do 
anything  else.  You  will  find  them  in  the  city 
hanging  around  the  cigar  stores  to  watch 
some  man  play  the  nickel-in-the-slot  machine, 
or  in  the  five-cent  theaters,  or  spending  af- 
ternoons at  the  "  Orpheum  "  as  if  they  had 
already  attained  such  success  in  life  that 
they  could  afford  to  spend  daylight  hours  in 
watching  a  few  people  do  clever  stunts  at 
fifteen  or  twenty  dollars  a  week.  You  will 
find  them  spending  whole  afternoons  and 
evenings  counting  red  and  black  spots,  as  if 
nowhere  on  earth  was  there  anything  vital 
to  engage  their  powers.  You  will  find  them 
looking  at  print — not  reading,  let  us  save 

[6] 


^tjs  piain  puvpogz 


that  good  word  for  honest  intellectual  effort 
— and  such  print  as  could  have  no  value 
whatsoever  for  tomorrow's  life.  I  cannot  tell 
you  all  the  places  where  you  will  find  them — 
there  is  an  army  of  them,  some  of  them  earn- 
ing their  own  livings  after  a  fashion,  some 
of  them  still  sponging  on  their  fathers  or  liv- 
ing on  money  inherited.  If  you  were  to  ask 
any  one  of  them,  "  What  is  your  purpose  in 
life?  "  he  would  be  utterly  nonplussed. 
You  will  find  also  another  type  of  these  pur- 
poseless men.  They  are  not  dawdlers  nor 
idlers ;  they  have  red  blood  in  their  veins, 
quarts  of  it.  They  are  brim  full  of  energy. 
There  is  something  doing  with  them  every 
hour  in  the  day  and  a  good  share  of  the 
night.  They  are  full  of  interest  and  enthu- 
siasm, but  the  trouble  is  their  lives  are  as 
Amiel  said,  "  a  mass  of  beginnings  and  end- 
ings." There  is  a  lack  of  continuity  and  of 
direction ;  the  various  elements  have  not  been 
brought  under  the  mastery  of  a  clearcut, 
definite  purpose.  They  are  "  bound  nowhere 
under  full  sail." 

[7] 


C^e  goimg  jEan'g  affair 

Dean  Swift  used  to  tell  this  story  on  himself. 
He  had  been  out  of  town  and  was  returning 
to  perform  a  marriage  ceremony.  His  train 
was  late,  and  when  he  reached  the  station  at 
Dublin  it  lacked  only  a  few  minutes  of  the 
hour  of  the  wedding.  He  ran  out  and  jumped 
into  a  jaunting  car,  calling  out  to  the  cab- 
man, "  Drive  like  Jehu !  I  am  late  now  and 
have  only  a  few  minutes  to  get  there."  The 
man  gave  his  horse  a  cut  and  was  off  down 
the  street  in  a  gallop.  The  Dean  held  on  with 
both  hands  as  the  little  open  jaunting  car 
pitched  about,  and  presently  called  out  to 
the  man,  "  Where  are  you  going?  "  "  I  don't 
know,  sir,"  was  the  reply ;  "  you  didn't  say 
where  I  was  to  go,  but  I'm  driving  like 
Jehu." 

You  will  find  young  fellows  in  every  city, 
with  splendid  capacity,  able  to  move  through 
the  streets  of  solid  achievement  at  a  telling 
pace,  but  no  definite  word  of  command  has 
been  spoken  as  yet  to  their  restless  activity. 
They  do  not  know  where  they  are  going ; 
there  is  no  compelling  purpose  behind  all 

[8] 


$  is  ifttaiu  purpose 


this  show  of  action.  They  are  merely  driving 
like  Jehu  with  no  sufficient  aim. 
When  a  man  is  lost  in  the  woods  and  wants 
to  get  home,  the  most  important  question  is 
not,  "  Am  I  walking,  or  running,  or  riding 
a  fast  horse?"  The  important  question  is, 
"Am  I  faced  right?  Am  I  moving  straight 
ahead  and  not  merely  circling  around  and 
around  ?  "  It  is  imperative  that  you  should 
have  some  end  in  view.  You  cannot  read 
everything,  or  buy  everything,  or  enjoy 
everything,  or  see  everything.  You  may,  if 
you  choose,  make  the  vain  attempt,  circling 
around  until  the  best  years  of  your  life  are 
gone  and  you  are  back  where  you  started. 
But  if  you  intend  to  get  out  of  the  woods  of 
uncertain  and  purposeless  effort  into  the 
open  of  noble  and  useful  achievement,  you 
must  exercise  the  power  of  selection,  content 
to  leave  whole  areas  off  to  the  right  and  to 
the  left,  as  you  pursue  the  commanding  pur- 
pose of  your  lifey 

When  you  ride  across  the  State  of  Nebraska 
on  the  Union  Pacific  you  are  impressed  with 

[9] 


C^e  goung  jttan'g  affair 

the  queer  ways  of  the  Platte  River.    It  is  a 
broad,  slow,  easygoing  stream,  not  carrying 
a  very  great  volume  of  water,  but  spread  out 
thin  over  a  good  deal  of  territory.     Because 
the  slant  of  the  country  is  so  slight  it  has 
not  much  movement  nor  current.    In  early 
days  when  the  soil  of  western  Nebraska  was 
even   looser   than   it   is   now,   owing   to   the 
scanty     vegetation,     the     Platte     sometimes 
shifted  its  course  for  miles  within  a  few  days. 
On   Monday   morning  a   man   might   be  en- 
camped upon  the  north  side,  but  by  Saturday 
night  he  might  be  living  on  the  south  side 
without  ever  moving  his  tent.   How  different 
all  that  is  from  the  river  Columbia  flowing 
strongly  between  steep,  high  banks,  the  only 
stream  that  has   cut  its  way  through  that 
mountain  chain  which  begins  up  in  Alaska 
and  extends  all  the  way  down  to  the  lower 
end  of  Mexico.  The  Columbia  shows  you  that 
it  is  a  river  with  a  purpose  and  you  know 
where  to  find  it  every  day  in  the  year !   It  is 
a  river  that  does  things ! 
I  would  say  to  every  young  man,  beware  of 

[10] 


l$i&  jttain  purpose 


that  easy  versatility  which  turns  readily 
from  one  channel  to  another,  from  one  job 
to  another,  from  one  line  of  life  to  some- 
thing entirely  different.  If  you  find  yourself 
equally  handy  at  a  dozen  different  pursuits, 
it  is  time  you  called  a  halt.  When  a  young 
man  comes  to  me  to  discuss  his  future  I  ask 
him,  "  What  do  you  want  to  do  ?  "  If  he  re- 
plies, "  Anything,"  I  am  almost  as  much  dis- 
appointed as  if  he  had  said,  "Nothing."  Men 
who  are  content  to  do  anything  will  usually 
be  shoved  off  into  some  corner  to  do  nothing 
before  tliey  get  through.  "  This  one  thing  I 
do,"  said  the  man  who  wrote  his  influence 
upon  the  life  of  his  generation  more  pro- 
foundly than  any  other  save  the  Master 
whom  he  served.  He  was  not  ready  to  do  any- 
thing, but  he  could  do  this  one  thing  well.^ 
I  have  discussed  the  general  importance  of 
having  a  definite  purpose  long  enough;  now 
what  are  some  of  the  particular  purposes 
which  exercise  their  mastery  over  young 
men? 

There  is  first  of  all  the  thought  of  having  a 


C^e  goung  jHan'ss  affafrjs 

good  time.  "  I  want  to  have  my  full  share  of 
the  physical  and  other  delights  which  are 
open  to  men."  When  you  find  a  young  fel- 
low in  the  wrong  place  he  is  commonly  there 
because  he  doesn't  want  to  miss  anything — 
he  wants  to  see  life.  "  I  want  to  have  all  the 
amusements  and  recreations,  outdoor  and  in- 
door sports,  within  my  reach.  I  want  to  read 
enjoyable  books,  hear  enjoyable  music,  and 
see  the  most  enjoyable  plays  that  come  to 
town.  I  want  to  have  as  many  social  good 
times  as  I  can.  I  want  to  travel  and  see  as 
much  of  the  world  as  I  may.  In  a  word,  I 
want  to  enjoy  life  to  the  full  as  far  as  I  can 
compass  it." 

This  is  not  an  evil  purpose  in  itself.  You  can 
put  evil  things  into  it  just  as  you  can  pack 
pistols  and  dynamite,  or  loaded  dice  and 
gambler's  cards  into  a  good  dress-suit  case 
in  place  of  the  things  that  an  honest  trav- 
eler wants  to  carry.  But  the  purpose  to 
have  a  good  time  is  not  in  itself  evil.  The 
pursuit  of  happiness,  the  gaining  of  pleasure 
in  the  exercise  of  one's  powers,  is  not  only 

[12] 


J 


ii^jS  jHafn  pwtpoge 


permissible,  but  imperative,  if  we  are  to  live 
up  to  our  best.  The  sour-faced  people  who 
cannot  eat  anything  with  relish,  nor  see  any- 
thing without  finding  fault  with  it,  nor  laugh 
at  anything  without  apologizing  to  their 
consciences,  nor  take  unmodified  pleasure  in 
any  of  the  experiences  which  come,  have  al- 
together missed  the  meaning  of  life,  even 
though  they  may  be  as  coldly  correct  in  the 
performance  of  certain  duties  as  were  the 
Pharisees  of  old.  Happiness,  high,  fine,  real, 
is  God's  own  seal  upon  the  right  use  of  our 
powers.  Even  the  sober  old  catechism  had  it 
right.  "  The  chief  end  of  man  is  to  glorify 
God  and  enjoy  him  " — as  the  sum  of  all  the 
forces,  realities  and  opportunities  there  are 
— "  forever." 

But  happiness,  after  all,  is  an  incident  and 
not  the  main  consideration.  He  that  saveth 
his  happiness  by  aiming  for  it  directly  all 
the  time  will  lose  it.  He  that  loseth  sight  of 
his  happiness  in  his  devotion  to  certain  ends 
which  are  fundamental  shall  find  it.  If  you 
set  out  to  make  your  main  purpose  that  of 

[13] 


C^e  goimg  iHan'js  affair 

having  a  good  time,  you  will  miss  other  more 
important  things  and  in  the  end  you  will 
miss  the  good  time  itself.  The  young  man 
who  does  his  work  in  the  store  or  shop  or 
office  thinking  more  of  the  evening's  pleas- 
ures which  are  at  the  end  of  the  day  than  of 
the  work  he  is  doing,  will  be  sitting  out  some- 
where on  a  big  high  stool  thirty  years  from 
now  when  the  young  fellow  who  is  thinking 
more  about  his  work  than  about  the  even- 
ing's pleasures  will  be  sitting  in  the  direc- 
tors' meeting  deciding  whether  or  not  the 
salary  of  the  other  man  shall  be  increased.  A 
good  time  is  not  sufficient  to  furnish  a  funda- 
mental purpose. 

There  is  also  the  purpose  of  making  money. 
"  Money  talks,"  and  to  many  people  it  has 
the  most  interesting  things  to  say.  It  is 
money  that  makes  possible  all  those  pleas- 
ures and  amusements.  It  is  money  that 
builds  the  home  and  fills  it  with  beautiful 
furniture  and  lovely  clothing  for  those  we 
love.  It  is  money  that  puts  books  on  a  man's 
shelves    and    pictures    on    the    walls.     It    is 

[ii] 


i^tjs  jftain  pmyogz 


money  that  opens  the  way  for  automobiles 
and  yachts  and  all  the  rest  of  it.  It  is  money 
that  makes  possible  extensive  travel,  so  that 
a  man's  consciousness  is  enlarged  and  his 
sympathetic  touch  with  life  broadened  by  his 
having  seen  many  lands,  many  peoples,  many 
forms  of  civilization.  "  Money  is  every- 
thing," people  say,  "  therefore  put  money 
in  thy  purse." 

It  is  not  an  evil  purpose.  It,  too,  may  have 
evil  things  packed  into  it — this  is  often  the 
case,  but  it  is  not  necessary.  A  man  who  is 
content  to  live  in  poverty  when  the  way  is 
open  for  him  to  live  in  comfort  through  ex- 
tra exertion,  is  either  lazy,  or  foolish,  or 
wicked,  perhaps  all  three.  It  is  a  legitimate 
and  laudable  ambition  to  wish  to  compass 
the  joy  and  exercise  the  power  that  pros- 
perity brings.  I  am  frank  to  say  that  it  cost 
me  a  struggle  to  go  into  the  ministry,  and 
one  of  the  things  which  held  me  back  for  a 
long  time  was  the  thought  that  I  could  never 
be  rich — no  minister  is  ever  rich  unless  he 
inherits  or  marries  his  money.   I  would  urge 

[15] 


C^e  gouns  jHan'js  affair 

every  young  man  to  strive  with  all  his  might 
to  succeed  financially  in  order  that  he  may 
have  the  joy  of  providing  generously  for  his 
own  tastes  and  for  the  tastes  of  others  who 
may  share  in  his  prosperity. 
But  the  mere  purpose  of  making  money  is 
not  large  enough  to  have  the  best  energies 
of  a  young  man's  life  committed  into  its 
keeping.  It  leaves  whole  areas  of  his  nature 
unprovided  for.  What  would  you  think  of  a 
clergyman,  or  a  physician,  or  a  teacher,  or 
a  soldier,  who  confessed  to  you  that  his  main 
ambition  was  to  make  money.  He  would  be 
discredited  in  your  eyes  at  once.  Why,  then, 
should  the  merchant  or  the  manufacturer  ac- 
cept for  himself  such  a  fundamental  aim  ?  It 
is  because  business  has  not  yet  been  moralized 
to  the  same  degree  as  the  profession  of  the 
ministry  or  medicine,  of  teaching  or  of  mili- 
tary life.  The  day  is  coming,  however,  when 
the  ambition  to  make  money  unrelieved  by 
worthier  aims  set  over  it,  will  seem  so  utterly 
sordid  as  to  make  any  self-respecting  man 
unwilling  to  confess  such  a  purpose.  Making 

[16] 


i^tjs  J&atn  putpottt 


a  living  is  one  thing,  making  a  life  is  quite 
another  thing — it  is  altogether  higher,  vast- 
er and  more  alluring. 

There  is  also  the  purpose  of  getting  to  the 
front.  I  wish  to  succeed,  some  young  man 
says,  and  by  that  I  do  not  mean  mere  mate- 
rial success.  I  want  to  have  friends,  hosts  of 
them ;  a  nice  home  and  a  good  family.  I  want 
to  hold  a  good  place  in  society.  I  want  to 
be  esteemed  by  my  fellow  citizens  and  have 
some  honorable  position  in  my  city,  my  state, 
if  possible,  my  nation.  I  want  to  accomplish 
something  that  men  will  remember  when  I  am 
gone,  in  literature,  in  the  development  of  the 
resources  of  my  community,  or  in  charitable 
and  philanthropic  effort.  I  wish  to  enjoy  the 
gratitude  and  esteem  of  my  fellow  men. 
There  is  no  fault  to  be  found  with  this  pur- 
pose. Indeed,  the  young  man  who  has  not 
something  of  all  these  purposes  is  not  a  nor- 
mal man.  But  they  do  not  touch  bottom.  All 
these  purposes  that  I  have  named,  to  have  a 
good  time,  to  make  money,  to  achieve  a  wor- 
thy success,  are  legitimate,  but  subordinate. 

[17] 


OF  THE 


SiTY 


C^e  goimg  ifftan'is  affair 


They  are  the  incidentals  of  right  living,  but 
they  do  not  furnish  the  supreme  motive.  Let 
me  turn,  then,  to  One  who  wrought  His 
splendid  achievements  and  made  His  deep  im- 
press upon  the  life  of  the  race,  writing  His 
name  above  every  name,  while  He  was  yet 
young — He  was  put  to  death  when  He  was 
only  thirty-three.  Let  me  turn  to  Him  for  a 
purpose  which  is  fundamental. 
"  I  come  to  do  the  will  of  Him  that  sent  me." 
He  believed  that  behind  all  these  phenomena 
there  is  an  intelligent  and  moral  purpose. 
He  believed  in  God.  And  He  believed  that 
included  in  that  infinite  purpose  there  was  a 
particular  purpose  for  His  individual  life. 
He  found  the  essential  aim  of  His  own  ex- 
istence in  the  fulfilment  of  that  purpose 
which  lies  behind  all  we  see.  I  come  to  act, 
to  think,  to  grow,  to  live  in  the  fulfilment  of 
an  eternal  purpose  underlying  my  life  and 
all  lives — here  we  find  an  aim  worthy  to  take 
command  of  our  best  strength! 
Here  we  do  touch  bottom.  The  doing  of  the 
will  of  Him  who  sent  us  will  mean  in  the 

[18] 


ipfe  jHafn  pmpozz 


grand  outcome  a  good  time  of  such  extent 
and  elevation  as  eye  hath  not  seen  nor  ear 
heard.  It  will  mean  gain,  treasures  of  the 
sort  that  men  lay  up  in  the  world  of  perma- 
nent and  transcendent  values.  It  will  mean 
getting  to  the  front  in  an  enduring  success, 
which  will  put  the  crown  of  glory  on  the 
head  of  every  man  who  attains.  It  will  in- 
clude all  that  is  high,  fine,  lasting  in  pleas- 
ure, knowledge,  action  and  worth.  I  am  here 
for  that! 

If  you  are  clear-headed  and  honest-hearted 
you  cannot  stop  this  side  of  such  an  aim 
when  once  you  begin  to  think.  You  must 
build  your  life  worthily  into  that  universal 
and  eternal  plan  which  lies  in  the  mind  and 
heart  of  Him  who  sent  you.  To  do  that  is 
to  live,  and  nothing  less  than  that  will  suffice. 
Take  that  as  your  main  purpose  and  you  will 
never  rue  it. 

"  Greatly  begin, 
Though  thou  have  time  but  for  a  line 
Make  that  one  line  forever  sublime. 
Not  failure,  but  low  aim  is  crime." 

[19] 


€^e  gomtQ  jftan'js  affair 

There  are  shortsighted  men  who  can  see 
across  the  street,  but  they  cannot  see  their 
way  across  the  field  of  human  effort.  They 
can  look  ahead  for  fifteen  minutes,  but  not 
for  fifteen  years.  You  cannot  afford  to 
travel  in  that  class.  If  you  catch  the  vision 
of  this  young  Man,  who  came  to  do  the  will 
of  the  One  who  sent  Him,  you  will  indeed  see 
far  ahead.  And  when  once  you  have  accepted 
His  life  purpose  to  do  the  will  of  Him  who 
sends  you,  all  your  pleasures  and  associa- 
tions, all  your  duties  and  privileges  will  be- 
come not  pools  signifying  nothing  beyond 
themselves,  but  flowing  tributaries  to  the 
main  stream  of  your  purposeful  life,  which, 
like  the  river  of  God,  will  make  glad  the 
whole  city  of  your  diversified  interests.  Take 
from  the  lips  of  the  Lord  Christ  the  control- 
ling purpose  of  your  life,  and  you  will  live 
strongly  and  well  and  forever! 


[20] 


tfe  %ntimatt$ 


[21] 


CHAPTER    SECOND 


f  tjS  3Jntimategf 


GROUP  of  friends  well 
chosen,  thoroughly  trusted 
and  firmly  held  can  bestow 
upon  a  young  man's  life 
benefits  inestimable.  The 
touch  and  rub  of  life  upon 
life  in  the  intimacy  of  a  fine  friendship  serves 
to  bring  a  man  up  to  a  higher  level  of 
efficiency. 

When  a  young  man  goes  to  High  School  or 
College  he  matriculates  not  in  one  school,  but 
in  three.  I  name  them  in  what  I  believe  to  be 
the  ascending  order  of  their  importance.  He 
goes  to  school  first  to  his  books,  his  own  text 
books  and  the  books  in  the  library  which  he 
may  be  led  to  read  and  those  other  books  to 
which  he  may  be  introduced  and  thus  be  in- 
clined to  read  later. 

He  goes  to  school  to  his  instructors — not 
dry  as  dust  men  who  merely  impart  informa- 

[23] 


C^e  gotms  jEau'js  affair 

tion  like  the  Britannica  or  teach  subjects  as 
some  well-oiled  pedagogical  machine  might 
do,  but  live  instructors,  large-minded,  great- 
souled  men  who  make  their  subjects  glow 
with  light  and  burn  with  warmth;  men  who 
arouse  and  mature  and  enrich  the  whole  in- 
ner life  of  the  young  people  who  come  within 
the  length  of  their  cable  tow.  One  great 
teacher,  Shaler  at  Harvard,  Remsen  at  Johns 
Hopkins,  Harper  at  Chicago,  Jordan  at 
Stanford,  does  not  take  up  as  much  space  as 
a  library,  but  pour  him  out  upon  a  campus 
full  of  young  men  and  he  does  more  to  in- 
spire and  instruct  than  all  the  books  in  the 
stack. 

In  the  third  place  he  goes  to  school  to  his 
fellow  students.  The  average  young  man 
takes  for  good  or  ill,  color  and  odor,  direc- 
tion and  aspiration,  from  his  intimates  in  the 
fraternity  house  or  on  the  athletic  field,  in 
the  class  room  and  in  the  laboratory,  in  the 
easy  touch  and  go  of  social  life,  more  than 
from  all  his  books  or  his  professors.  This  is 
my    own    judgment    based    on    many   years 

[24] 


$f*  3iutimatejs 


spent  in  and  around  universities  as  student, 
as  lecturer  and  as  the  friend  of  the  bo  vs.  I 
could  bring  you,  if  I  chose,  corroboration 
from  more  college  presidents  and  professors 
than  I  would  have  time  to  name  in  this  half 
hour. 

You  will  find  the  same  thing  is  true  in  that 
larger  university  where  there  is  a  continuous 
performance  of  education  going  on,  the  uni- 
versity we  call  "  Life."  Books  speak  to  the 
young  man  who  is  willing  to  sit  down  and 
listen.  The  appointed  instructors  at  home, 
in  school,  in  the  church  can  accomplish  much 
if  their  work  is  well  done.  But  after  all  the 
young  fellow's  intimates,  the  boys  and  girls, 
the  men  and  women  with  whom  he  associates, 
by  their  prevailing  moods,  by  the  purposes 
which  really  dominate  their  lives,  by  the  at- 
mosphere they  carry,  exercise  the  most  po- 
tent influence  of  all.  "  Iron  sharpeneth  iron, 
so  a  man  sharpeneth,"  or  dulleth,  "  the  coun- 
tenance of  his  friend."  You  may  ruin  a 
razor  permanently  with  a  file  in  five  minutes ; 
so  the  fine  edge  of  character  may  be  speedily 

[25] 


€^e  gouttg  jttan'g  affairs 

nicked  or  turned  by  those  powerful  personal 
influences  which  emanate  from  intimate  asso- 
ciation. 

You  cannot  afford  then  to  drop  into  your 
friendships  as  an  apple  drops  from  the  tree 
into  green  grass  or  filth  as  the  case  may  be 
because  it  cannot  choose.  You  cannot  afford 
to  drift  into  a  certain  set  of  associates  by 
force  of  circumstances  as  if  you  had  no 
power  to  steer  your  intimacies.  There  are 
eighty  millions  of  people  in  this  country  to 
go  no  further — you  cannot  know  them  all 
and  you  would  not  want  to  if  you  could. 
There  are  more  than  two  hundred  thousand 
people  in  this  town — you  can  only  know  a 
small  percentage  of  that  number  intimately. 
You  must  choose,  therefore,  and  if  you 
would  have  the  mighty  power  of  intimate  as- 
sociation a  help  and  not  a  hindrance,  you 
must  choose  wisely. 

It  requires  thought  and  care  to  develop  a 
fine  friendship.  It  will  not  grow  of  itself  like 
a  weed — it  is  an  orchid,  rare,  beautiful, 
costly.    Luther   Burbank  in  producing  new 

[26] 


^fe  gintimates 


and  useful  forms  of  flower  and  fruit  found 
there  was  no  way  by  which  pollen  could  be 
applied  and  made  effective  in  certain  cross- 
fertilizations  except  by  his  own  bare,  skilled 
hand.  No  tool,  no  machine,  no  wind  of 
chance  would  accomplish  it.  It  required  the 
touch  of  his  own  personal  life.  You  cannot 
fashion  the  friendships  you  need  by  the  wind 
of  chance  or  by  the  coarse  mechanism  of  con- 
ventional social  life  or  by  the  rude  accident 
of  business  relations — the  bare  touch  of  your 
own  mind  and  heart  going  forth  in  the  proc- 
ess of  thoughtful,  conscientious  selection  is 
needed  if  you  would  know  intimacy  with  your 
fellows  at  its  best. 

I  make  it  a  point  to  urge  every  young  man 
to  make  a  great  many  friends  in  early  life. 
You  need  them  now  and  you  will  need  them 
still  more  as  the  years  go.  Some  will  die. 
Some  will  remove  from  your  vicinage.  Some, 
Alas !  will  disappoint  you.  It  is  good  to 
know  a  great  many  people  and  out  of  them 
select  a  number  of  real  friends  so  that  as  you 
grow  older  you  will  not  be  left  alone,  for 

[27] 


C^e  poun$  jflan'g  affatttf 

you  will  find  there  are  no  friendships  like 
those  which  are  formed  in  early  life.  If  you 
are  to  be  a  salesman,  a  banker,  a  lawyer,  a 
doctor  or  a  man  with  political  aspirations, 
the  more  friends  the  better.  And  all  aside 
from  the  advantage  which  will  come  to  you 
in  your  chosen  work,  the  very  esteem  and 
confidence  of  many  people  will  in  the  end 
bring  enlargement  and  enrichment  to  your 
own  heart. 

You  hear  the  expression  "  selfmade  man."  It 
is  a  useless  phrase — there  is  none  such.  If 
there  ever  were,  they  are  an  extinct  race  now 
like  dodos.  In  every  successful  life,  parents, 
teachers  and  friends,  writers,  speakers  and 
singers,  actors,  preachers  and  all  the  rest, 
have  made  their  deposits  of  influence.  The 
strong  life  grows  rich  as  the  bank  does  by 
having  many  people  flow  up  to  it  and  make 
some  deposit  in  it.  The  main  point  is  to  see 
to  it  that  their  deposits  are  good  money  and 
not  counterfeit,  for  the  more  you  live  the 
more  you  will  take  from  those  with  whom 
you  associate. 

[28] 


I^fjs  9lntfmatCiS 


That  ancient  ecclesiastical  ceremony  called 
"  the  laying  on  of  hands  "  in  the  ordination 
of  a  young  man  to  the  Christian  ministry 
was  a  beautiful  testimony  to  the  power  and 
contagion  of  personal  influence.  It  was  not 
intended  to  be  a  magical  thing  as  if  when  the 
Bishop  and  elders  laid  their  hands  upon  the 
head  of  the  candidate  some  mysterious  in- 
fluence passed  making  him  now  competent  to 
instruct  men  in  righteousness  or  minister  the 
comfort  of  divine  grace.  It  was  the  outward 
and  visible  sign  of  something  inward  and 
spiritual.  The  young  man,  be  he  ever  so  en- 
ergetic, brainy  and  devout,  could  not  go 
forth  and  succeed  in  his  own  strength.  He 
must  receive  from  men  as  well  as  from  God — 
from  God  mainly  through  men — those  po- 
tent and  holy  influences  which  would  mature 
and  enrich  his  own  power  to  serve.  In  form- 
ing your  own  intimacies  let  the  hands  of 
many  wise  and  good  men  be  laid  upon  you 
early,  repeatedly,  continuously  that  you  may 
be  ordained  to  a  splendid  life  of  honor  and 
usefulness. 

[29] 


Stye  goung  jflan's  affair 

In  making  choice  of  those  intimates,  I 
would  suggest  a  few  principles.  Friends,  the 
more  the  better  and  they  may  cover  a  wide 
range!  Intimates,  not  very  many  and  these 
selected  with  the  greatest  care!  I  know  a 
great  many  people  around  this  Bay,  all  sorts 
and  kinds;  some  of  them  are  drunkards, 
liars,  libertines,  thieves.  They  count  me  a 
friend  and  I  am  profoundly  glad  to  have  it 
so.  I  think  now  of  a  young  fellow  whom  I 
know  well  who  showed  himself  a  thief  repeat- 
edly, but  he  is  pulling  up  out  of  it  to-day 
splendidly  and  I  look  forward  to  the  hour 
when  he  will  stand  forth,  honest  and  true, 
able  to  look  the  whole  world  in  the  face.  I 
know  a  great  many  people,  but  my  intimates, 
the  men  and  women  whose  lives  come  close  to 
my  own,  to  whom  I  open  my  mind  and  heart 
freely,  are  not  drunkards  and  libertines, 
liars  and  thieves.  I  want  my  intimates  to  be 
of  another  sort. 

You  can  be  on  good  terms  with  a  great  many 
people  whose  fundamental  attitude  toward 
life  does  not  match  your  own.    You  cannot 

[30] 


^fe  Intimates 


afford  to  be  on  intimate  terms  with  a  man 
who  is  lacking  in  reverence,  in  unimpeachable 
honesty,  in  profound  respect  for  womanly 
purity  or  in  definite,  serious  purpose.  These 
are  the  four  cardinal  attitudes,  toward  God, 
toward  the  truth,  toward  woman,  toward 
oneself.  You  cannot  afford  to  have  intimates 
lacking  in  reverence,  in  honesty,  in  purity,  in 
purpose.  The  color  and  the  odor  such  men 
leave  would  cling  to  you  also.  You  need  for 
intimates  those  who  are  clearly  and  strongly 
on  the  side  of  right. 

It  is  well  to  cut  out  at  the  start  all  those 
friendships  which  require  champagne  glasses 
and  beer  steins  to  keep  them  going.  There 
is  nothing  useful  to  be  gotten  out  of  such  in- 
timacies. You  cannot  gather  grapes  of 
thorns  or  figs  from  thistles.  A  great  com- 
pany of  enthusiastic  young  fellows  with  just 
as  much  cleverness  and  just  as  little  experi- 
ence of  life  as  you  have,  believed  they  could. 
They  tried  it  out  to  a  finish  and  they  came 
forth  not  with  grapes  or  figs,  but  with  their 
hands,  their  minds  and  their  hearts  full  of 

[31] 


C^e  goimg  jflan'g  affafttf 

ugly  briers  rapidly  developing  into  festering 
sores.  It  cannot  be  done — the  experiment 
has  been  fully  made  and  there  is  no  need  for 
you  to  waste  your  time  and  money  and  good 
name  in  making  it  again. 
It  is  just  as  well  to  cut  out  of  your  list  of 
intimates  the  young  fellow  whose  main  pur- 
pose seems  to  be  to  spend  as  much  time  as 
possible  in  and  around  automobiles.  The 
auto  is  a  good  servant  when  it  is  under  the 
control  of  skill  and  conscience.  It  is  a  terri- 
ble menace  to  life  and  property  when  the 
steering  gear  is  wanting  or  out  of  order  and 
it  runs  uncontrolled.  It  is  a  terrible  master 
when  it  wields  such  a  fascination  over  the 
heart  and  purse  of  a  young  man  who  thinks 
of  it  by  day  when  he  ought  to  be  working 
with  all  the  strength  of  mind  he  can  bring 
to  bear  and  then  spends  the  hours  needed  for 
sleep  in  devoting  himself  to  it  by  night.  The 
average  garage  is  not  a  place  of  light  and 
leading — it  has  been  the  pathway  downward 
for  a  considerable  number  of  young  men  who 
might  have  been."    That  is  all  they  will 

[32] 


a 


f  te  3Intfmate$ 


ever  be  now — "  might  have  beens."  Young 
fellows  are  being  tricked  out  of  their  futures 
by  this  new  device  with  speed  and  smell  which 
we  call  an  automobile.  You  can  afford  to  cut 
out  of  jour  list  of  intimates  the  young  men 
afflicted  with  serious  cases  of  "  autophobia  " 
— they  will  never  be  heard  from  in  any  favor- 
able way  in  the  great  round  up. 
It  is  just  as  well  to  cut  out  those  friends  who 
live  uniformly  in  the  flippant  mood.  Fun  is 
as  wholesome  in  its  way  as  food.  The  sense 
of  humor  is  as  necessary  as  the  sense  of 
honor  to  make  up  a  complete  man.  But  it 
is  to  be  regarded  always  as  the  spice  of  life, 
the  pepper,  mustard  and  cinnamon,  not  the 
roast  beef,  or  the  bread  and  potatoes  on 
which  we  live.  Life  as  a  whole,  when  you  add 
it  all  up  and  strike  a  trial  balance,  is  not 
funny.  It  is  serious  business  and  the  flippant 
chap  misses  all  the  finer  phases  of  it.  The 
world  does  not  put  into  his  keeping  its  more 
valued  interests.  The  joker  is  not  the  best 
card  in  the  pack  except  by  an  artificial  rule 
and  in  all  the  better  games  it  is  thrown  out 

[  33] 


C^e  gnung  jttau'g  affairs 


altogether.  Many  a  young  fellow  has  turned 
himself  down  flat  and  hard  and  finally  by 
being  "  too  flip."  He  learned  it  in  circles  of 
intimates  where  flippancy  was  regarded  as 
the  main  excellence.  Many  a  girl  has  giggled 
herself  out  of  all  possibility  of  marrying  a 
man  who  could  have  given  her  position, 
honor,  enrichment,  enduring  happiness — such 
men  do  not  take  machines  to  their  homes 
whose  records  are  all  flippant  talk  and 
giggle. 

You  need  friends  who  by  their  finer  insight 
and  their  hidden  faith  idealize  you.  They 
take  you  as  they  know  you,  as  you  are,  but 
behind  you,  within  you,  and  above  you,  they 
see  another  possible  man.  They  are  looking 
eagerly  and  waiting  patiently  for  that  man 
to  emerge.  By  their  expectation  and  their 
faith  they  help  him  out  into  the  world.  They 
are  constantly  saying  what  the  master  of  the 
house  said  in  the  parable,  "  Friend,  go  up 
higher."  You  discover  yourself  anew  in  their 
very  attitude  toward  some  of  your  rawness 
and  inexperience — you  long  to  make  the  re- 

[34] 


i^te  gintfmatejs 


ality  match  with  their  faith  in  your  capacity. 
It  is  deadly  in  the  long  run  not  to  have  that 
quality  in  our  friends.  "  I  do  enjoy  spending 
the  evening  with  Fannie,"  one  young  fellow 
said  to  another ;  "  she  always  makes  me  feel 
so  satisfied  with  myself."  Yes,  there  are  Fan- 
nies innumerable  sitting  invitingly  on  the 
sofas  here  and  there,  but  the  only  qualities 
which  they  call  out  in  the  young  men  who 
take  that  easy  road  are  not  the  best  that  is 
in  them. 

No  young  man  ever  grows  strong  until  peo- 
ple begin  to  take  stock  in  him,  believe  in  him  j 
and  honor  him  by  their  friendship.  It  is  like 
the  call  of  God  to  enter  upon  a  nobler  life — 
it  is  the  call  of  God,  for  God  speaks  most 
commonly  through  men.  You  know  the  story 
of  Burns  and  Sir  Walter  Scott.  Burns  was 
twelve  years  older  than  Scott  and  coming 
into  his  fame  early  had  made  his  name  one  to 
be  conjured  with  in  Scotland  when  Sir  Wal- 
ter was  unknown.  One  night  at  the  home  of 
a  friend  Burns  found  some  lines  written  on 
a  slip  of  paper  and  pinned  under  a  portrait. 

[35] 


C^e  Powng  ifttan'jS  affaitjs 

When  he  inquired  as  to  the  author,  the  name 
of  Scott  was  whispered  to  him.  He  went  to 
the  young  man  and  with  that  great  warm 
heart,  which  has  won  him  friends  everywhere 
the  sun  shines,  said,  "  You  will  be  a  great 
man  in  Scotland,  my  lad ;  you  have  it  in  you 
to  be  a  writer."  Scott,  a  timid,  tow-headed, 
awkward  boy  went  home  and  cried  all  night 
for  joy  at  the  recognition  he  had  received 
from  the  famous  poet.  And  the  confidence 
of  the  older  man,  his  expectancy  on  behalf 
of  his  youthful  friend,  aided  in  calling  him 
forth  into  a  splendid  career. 
You  need  those  maturer  friendships  with 
both  men  and  women  which  may  be  yours  if 
you  will  have  it  so.  You  are  missing  the 
mark  if  you  think  that  men  with  a  little  gray 
hair  showing  above  their  ears  have  no  taste 
for  the  friendship  of  young  fellows  whose 
use  of  the  razor  at  present  is  a  matter  of 
expectant  faith  rather  than  of  immediate 
necessity.  The  older  man  knows  all  you  know 
and  a  lot  besides.  He  has  felt  all  you  feel 
and  his  memory  is  keener  than  you  think ;  he 

[36] 


l$i$  3!nt<mate$$ 


can  enter  into  it  sympathetically  and  take 
your  point  of  view  until  he  shows  you  a  bet- 
ter one  in  a  way  that  would  amaze  you.  The 
professor  at  the  head  of  the  department 
where  you  are  studying;  the  man  of  affairs 
at  the  head  of  the  bank  or  the  department 
store  where  you  work ;  the  man  of  wisdom  on 
your  street  whom  you  could  know  if  you 
would — nine  out  of  ten  of  these  men  crave 
closer  contact  and  more  open  friendship  with 
the  young  fellows  if  those  chaps  did  not  seem 
to  shy  off  whenever  an  older  man  makes  a 
move  toward  them. 

The  best  friend  any  young  man  has  among 
women  is  his  own  mother  unless  she  has  made 
herself  unworthy  to  wear  that  title  of  honor. 
But  he  may  be  away  from  home  or  his 
mother  may  be  dead — then  it  is  good  to  have 
friends  among  women  who  have  lived  longer 
than  has  the  girl  with  the  pink  cheeks  and 
the  blue  ribbons.  The  young  fellow  who  can- 
not enjoy  himself  in  talking  with  any  woman 
unless  she  is  five  years  younger  than  he  is 
and  is  possessed  of  a  pretty  face  and  a  slen- 

[37] 


C^e  gouttg  ifetan'js  affair 

der  waist,  is  not  all  there.  The  friendship  of 
noble  women  where  it  is  all  in  the  clear,  open 
and  above  board  is  a  splendid  privilege. 
I  feel  as  you  do  that  those  married  women 
who,  for  the  sake  of  having  the  excitement 
of  lovemaking  prolonged,  take  advantage  of 
the  security  of  their  position  to  keep  dan- 
gling after  them  a  lot  of  young  fellows 
whose  Platonic  friendship  is  always  just  on 
the  verge  of  becoming  something  else — I  feel 
that  they  ought  to  be  hooted  out  of  decent 
society.  The  young  men  who  do  the  dan- 
gling are  soft-headed,  sappy,  cowardly  fools, 
but  the  married  woman  is  a  sneak  and  a 
cheat.  I  mean  nothing  of  that  sort,  but  the 
friendship  of  a  noble  woman,  nobly  enjoyed 
has  power  to  change  the  prose  of  life  into 
poetry  and  the  water  into  wine.  All  his 
aspirations  and  yearnings  may,  because  of 
her  ennobling  influence,  take  on  a  higher 
value. 

I  would  like  to  say  a  word  to  young  men  and 
to  older  people  as  to  the  high  privilege  and 
imperative  duty  of  opening  the  door  to  these 

[38] 


i^g  Untimatejs 


maturer  friendships.  Dr.  James  I.  Vance 
basing  his  computations  on  the  census  report 
of  1900  claims  that  in  any  American  city  of 
over  one  hundred  thousand  inhabitants  one- 
fifth  of  the  population  will  be  young  men  be- 
tween the  ages  of  sixteen  and  thirty.  In  the 
city  where  I  live  that  would  make  forty  thou- 
sand young  men.  Cut  it  in  two  if  you  think 
that  is  too  high  and  we  have  twenty  thou- 
sand young  men  here,  with  a  large  percent- 
age of  them  away  from  home.  What  an  op- 
portunity !  What  a  responsibility ! 
In  a  recent  address  of  Bishop  Hughes  he 
spoke  of  a  deacon  in  a  certain  Congrega- 
tional church  in  Boston,  who  many  years 
ago  said  to  himself,  "  I  cannot  speak  in 
prayer  meeting.  I  cannot  do  many  other 
things  in  Christian  service,  but  I  can  put 
two  extra  plates  on  my  dinner  table  every 
Sunday  and  invite  two  young  men  who  are 
away  from  home  to  break  bread  with  me." 
He  went  along  doing  that  for  more  than 
thirty  years.  He  became  acquainted  with  a 
great  company  of  young  men  who  were  at- 

[39] 


C^e  goung  jttan'js  affafrg 

tending  that  church,  and  many  of  them 
became  Christians  through  his  personal  in- 
fluence. When  he  died  recently  he  was  to 
be  buried  at  Andover,  thirty  miles  distant, 
and  because  he  was  a  well-known  merchant 
a  special  train  was  chartered  to  convey  the 
funeral  party.  It  was  made  known  that  any 
of  his  friends  among  the  young  men  who 
had  become  Christians  through  his  influence 
would  be  welcomed  in  a  certain  car,  set  aside 
for  them !  And  a  hundred  and  fifty  of  them 
came  and  packed  that  car  from  end  to  end 
to  honor  the  memory  of  the  man  who  had 
preached  to  them  the  gospel  of  the  extra 
dinner  plate! 

"  I  was  a  stranger  and  ye  took  me  in  " — it 
was  Christ  who  spoke  in  that  vein  in  His 
portrayal  of  the  great  judgment  scene.  He 
lifted  the  grace  of  kindly  hospitality  to  the 
same  high  level  of  service  rendered  to  the 
hungry  and  the  imprisoned.  He  exalted  that 
form  of  thoughtful  kindness  and  made  it  for- 
ever significant  by  insisting  that  inasmuch  as 
it  had  been   done  to   the  least  among   the 

[40] 


§i$  3]tttfmates$ 


strangers  in  a  great  city  it  had  been  done 
unto  Him. 

I  have  been  speaking  thus  far  of  human 
friendships.  There  is  another  Friend  of  a 
higher  order  whose  intimate  fellowship  you 
cannot  afford  to  miss.  It  was  Lord  Chester- 
field, cold,  critical,  skeptical,  but  a  past  mas- 
ter in  the  fine  art  of  social  intercourse,  who 
said  to  his  son,  "  After  all  there  has  been 
but  one  perfect  gentleman — the  one  born  in 
Bethlehem  of  Judea."  If  you  are  not  ready 
to  construe  the  terms  of  your  own  relation- 
ship to  the  Saviour  of  men  in  any  other 
form,  put  it  in  the  form  of  personal  friend- 
ship. He  phrased  it  so.  He  said,  not  to  a 
group  of  aged  saints  waiting  for  nightfall, 
but  to  a  group  of  young  men  eager,  active, 
full-blooded,  with  their  careers  before  them, 
"  I  call  you  not  servants,  I  call  you  friends." 
Take  it  in  that  form  if  you  will.  Stand  be- 
fore the  world  declaring  by  the  whole  pur- 
pose and  method  of  your  life  that  you  are  a 
friend  of  Jesus  Christ,  loyal  to  Him,  yoking 
your  life  with  His  for  the  accomplishment  of 

[41] 


C^e  goimg  jttatt'g  affafrjs 

certain  desires  which  you  hold  in  common ! 
His  friendship  accepted,  rejoiced  in  and  ex- 
pressed through  useful  service  will  be  re- 
warding and  ennobling  beyond  any  other 
single  influence  which  may  affect  your  life. 


[42] 


W  Boo&s 


[43] 


CHAPTER    THIRD 


$f0   TBOOfeg 


OU  will  find  these  words  in 
a  letter  written  to  a  young 
man  by  his  friend,  by  an 
older  man  who  was  always 
urging  upon  him  the  im- 
portance of  sound  and 
thorough  intellectual  development  as  well  as 
a  life  of  integrity  — "  When  thou  comest 
bring  with  thee  the  books,  especially  the 
parchments."  It  is  one  of  many  such  injunc- 
tions. "  Neglect  not  the  gift  that  is  in  thee." 
"  Give  attention  to  reading."  "  Study  to 
show  thyself  a  workman  that  need  not  be 
ashamed,  rightly  dividing  the  word  of  truth" 
— separating  the  vital  and  essential  from 
that  which  is  mere  ornament  and  trimming. 
And  now  as  the  young  man  sets  out  for 
Rome,  where  the  older  man  was  in  prison,  he 
is  asked  to  bring  with  him  materials  for  fur- 
ther study. 

[45] 


C^e  gotmg  ^Han's  affafrjs 

[Any  book  that  is  worth  carrying  to  Rome, 
any  book  that  is  worthy  of  being  taken  into 
the  capital  and  center  of  a  man's  own  mind 
and  heart  ought  to  be  one  into  which  some 
large  mind,  some  great  soul  has  put  its  best. 
Here  is  a  book  that  is  worth  while;  into  it 
some  serious,  resourceful,  aspiring  man  has 
put  his  truest  thought,  his  deepest  insight, 
his  highest  resolve,  his  holiest  yearning! 
It  may  be  history  or  biography,  poetry  or 
philosophy,  travel  or  romance,  science  or  re- 
ligion— I  care  not  if  it  comes  from  the  hand, 
the  mind,  the  heart  of  a  master!  It  will 
stretch  my  mind  and  stir  my  heart  as  I  strive 
to  take  its  message  into  my  life.  "  Bring  it 
to  me,"  I  say  to  my  purse  or  to  the  attend- 
ant in  the  library,  or  to  the  friend  who  will 
loan  it !  I  need  it  as  Paul  of  old  felt  the  need 
of  the  books  and  parchments  which  were  car- 
ried to  Rome. 

A  really  great  book  is  alive.  Cut  it  anywhere 
and  it  will  bleed.  You  cannot  tell  me  that 
bugs  and  worms  which  crawl  on  people  and 
make  them  jump  have  life  and  that  books 

[46] 


fytg  130060 


which  move  and  fire  the  hearts  of  men  to  no- 
ble aspiration,  to  heroic  duty,  are  without 
life.  If  you  should  say  so,  you  would  have  to 
enlarge  your  definition  of  life  so  that  it 
would  include  not  only  the  things  which  are 
seen  and  temporal,  but  those  unseen  things 
which  are  eternal. 

When  the  nerves  of  an  invalid  are  scant  of 
life  the  surgeons  today  can  open  the  veins  of 
some  strong,  healthy,  vigorous  nature  and 
by  transfusion  of  blood  save  life  and  restore 
health.  In  the  same  vital  way  when  you  take 
up  the  book  of  some  large,  wise,  healthy  soul 
who  ranks  among  the  immortals,  and  pos- 
sess yourself  of  it,  making  it  your  own  by 
reading  it  until  you  see  as  he  saw,  feel  what 
he  felt,  aspire  as  he  aspired  before  you,  you 
have  accomplished  that  mental  transfusion 
which  is  the  highest  phase  of  reading. 
When  I  get  close  to  any  young  fellow,  there- 
fore, I  always  feel  like  asking  him  in  a  whis- 
per, confidentially  of  course,  "  Can  you 
read?  "  I  do  not  mean  merely  taking  a  page 
of  print  and  pronouncing  the  words,  some 

[47] 


C^e  goimg  jHau'g  affair 


of  them  right  and  some  of  them  wrong.  Al- 
most anything  that  walks  on  two  feet  and 
has  hands  can  do  that — the  percentage  of 
actual  illiteracy  is  small  in  this  country.  But 
can  you  read  and  know  what  it  is  all  about 
and  how  it  bears  on  other  things  you  have 
read?  Can  you  see  three  things  on  a  page 
separately  with  close  discrimination  and  then 
see  them  in  their  mutual  relations  so  that 
you  can  organize  them?  Can  you  organize 
other  groups  of  three  with  them  until  you 
build  up  an  intellectual  system?  Can  you 
read  in  such  a  way  that  it  makes  you  think 
and  finally  produce  something  with  the  look 
and  taste  of  your  own  mind  upon  it?  Can 
you  read  history,  biography,  poetry,  fiction, 
science  or  religion  until  you  know  man's 
ways  in  the  large,  his  gait  and  general  direc- 
tion ;  so  that  you  can  strike  the  trail  of  hu- 
man progress  anywhere  and  follow  it?  It  is 
a  great  accomplishment  to  be  able  to  read — 
one  young  fellow  in  a  hundred  perhaps  takes 
pains  to  learn  how  to  read,  and  he  will  be 
heard  from. 

[48] 


f  ft  Q5006$ 


You  will  see  young  fellows  who  think  they 
are  reading  —  they  are  looking  at  print. 
They  will  sit  and  look  at  the  print  in  some 
bulky,  flabby  Sunday  paper  for  an  hour,  for 
three  hours,  perhaps,  or  at  Mv/nsey  and  the 
Black  Cat;  or  at  some  poor,  flashy  novel 
which  today  is  yelling  at  us  from  the  news- 
stands, a  month  from  now  is  being  put  aside 
because  people  are  not  asking  for  it,  and  a 
year  from  now  is  never  mentioned  because  no 
one  can  remember  that  he  ever  read  it.  You 
see  young  fellows  looking  at  that  sort  of 
print  for  hours  on  Sunday  or  through  whole 
evenings.  They  merely  want  something  to 
lean  their  feeble  minds  upon  to  save  them 
from  the  effort  of  thinking.  This  is  not 
reading  —  there  is  no  transfusion  of  life- 
blood  taking  place.  Why  spend  your  time  on 
inferior  stuff  when  there  is  so  much  first-class 
material  within  your  reach  unread! 
I  deplore  the  intemperate  newspaper  habit 
into  which  so  many  people  fall.  It  leads 
to  intellectual  degeneracy.  Ninety-nine  one- 
hundredths  of  all  that  appears  in  the  daily 

[49] 


Clje  gouttg  jman'js  affair 

papers  is  the  thinnest  kind  of  gruel ;  it  is  di- 
luted thought,  diluted  in  a  way  to  make  the 
extreme  homeopath  who  puts  one  little  pill 
the  size  of  a  birdshot  in  a  bucket  of  water, 
advising  his  patient  to  take  a  teaspoonful 
once  in  four  hours,  turn  green  with  envy. 
Every  man  who  lives  in  town  must  read  the 
daily  papers.  I  take  two,  one  morning  and 
one  evening,  but  ten  minutes  a  day  is  ample 
to  possess  myself  of  all  they  contain  for  me 
unless  something  of  unusual  interest  has 
transpired.  I  take  nine  of  the  best  weekly 
papers  I  know,  covering  a  wide  range  from 
the  strictly  theological  to  a  labor  union 
Journal — fifteen  minutes  on  an  average  is 
more  than  enough  for  each  one.  I  take  some 
monthly  magazines,  and  they,  too,  can  be 
rapidly  read.  The  best  reading  is  not  to  be 
found  in  the  daily,  which  today  is  and  to- 
morrow morning  kindles  the  fire  or  is 
wrapped  around  the  laundry  bundle.  Read 
books  instead  of  spending  so  many  hours  on 
papers,  if  you  would  be  strong,  for  the  man 
who  has  something  to  say  worth  while  will 


1$i$  TSOOt® 


not  be  satisfied  until  he  has  said  it  in  a  book 
that  will  last. 

I  spoke  last  week  on  the  value  of  personal 
association  with  the  right  sort  of  friends.  I 
firmly  believe  that  there  is  nothing  on  any 
printed  page  equal  to  the  same  word  made 
flesh  where  this  is  accessible.  But  books  open 
to  us  a  wider  range  of  association.  All  lands, 
all  periods,  all  levels  of  society  are  open  to 
us  through  literature.  The  house  I  have 
lived  in  since  I  came  to  California  thirteen 
years  ago  is  a  modest  affair  when  you  walk 
past  and  look  at  it  from  the  outside.  But 
kings  and  queens,  poets  and  prophets,  saints 
and  seers,  heroes  and  martyrs  have  been  liv- 
ing with  me  there.  Men  and  women  who  have 
been  doing  things,  political  things,  commer- 
cial things,  things  scientific  and  things  re- 
ligious, have  given  me  the  benefit  of  personal 
acquaintance  with  them  there  in  my  home. 
I  have  heard  Tennyson  sing  at  my  own  fire- 
side! I  have  heard  Burke  and  John  Bright, 
Webster  and  Wendell  Phillips  move  the  peo- 
ple by  their  matchless  orations  !  I  have  heard 

.[  51  J 


€^e  gouttg  jttan'js  affairs 


Macaulay  describe  the  trial  of  Warren  Hast- 
ings and  Carlyle  picture  the  tragedies  of 
the  French  Revolution,  and  James  Anthony 
Froude  make  Julius  Caesar  live  before  me  as 
a  fellow  man.  I  have  had  Dickens  and  An- 
thony Trollope  tell  me  stories  which  stretched 
out  for  weeks,  and  made  me  feel  as  if  I  had 
lived  in  Old  England  for  years  together.  I 
have  heard  Bushnell  and  Beecher,  Robertson 
and  Phillips  Brooks  preach. 
I  know  all  these  people  ever  so  much  better 
than  I  know  many  of  the  people  who  live  a 
block  away  on  my  own  street.  Speak  the 
word  "  Lincoln,"  or  "  Bismarck,"  or  "  Glad- 
stone " ;  speak  the  word  "  Shakespeare  "  or 
"  Milton  " ;  speak  the  word  "  Darwin,"  or 
"  Huxley,"  or  "  Agassiz"  and  they  are  not 
words,  they  are  men !  I  never  saw  any  one 
of  them — most  of  them  were  dead  before  I 
was  born — yet  through  the  medium  of  books 
they  have  come  to  me  and  I  have  spent  whole 
evenings  in  their  companionship  until  a 
splendid  share  of  the  inspiration  they  hold 
has  passed  into  my  own  mind  and  heart. 

[52] 


^fjS  Boons 


Enlarge  jour  book  shelves  and  you  enlarge 
your  house — you  enlarge  your  life  if  you 
read  books  and  make  them  your  own  by  vital 
assimilation.  You  go  baok  and  live  in  all 
those  great  periods  of  history.  You  go  and 
live  in  other  lands  which  you  have  never  vis- 
ited as  yet.  I  have  gone  with  Sven  Hedin  on 
his  travels  until  the  Desert  of  Gobi  and  the 
high  table  lands  of  Thibet  are  real  to  me — 
not  as  real  as  Lake  Tahoe,  Yosemite  and 
Kings  River  Canyon,  but  they  are  on  the 
map  of  my  daily  consciousness.  I  have  gone 
far  north  with  Nansen,  Andre  and  other 
intrepid  explorers  until  that  country  of  per- 
petual snow  lives  around  me.  I  have  pene- 
trated the  darkest  parts  of  Africa  with  Liv- 
ingstone, Stanley  and  Stevens  until  I  could 
hear  the  roar  of  the  lions  and  see  the  huge 
amphibious  beasts  and  watch  the  little  pyg- 
mies living  among  the  trees.  Read  what  is 
worth  while  with  patience,  concentration, 
continuity  and  it  builds  your  life  out  and  up 
as  no  amount  of  hasty  scanning  of  popular 
trash  can  ever  do. 

[53] 


C^e  goung  jttan'ss  affair 

But  I  wish  to  offer  some  concrete  sugges- 
tions to  young  men  about  the  use  of  books. 
First  of  all,  read  mainly  the  great  books. 
When  I  walk  through  a  large  department 
store  or  along  the  street  in  front  of  the  shop 
windows  I  always  feel  thankful  that  there  are 
so  many  things  in  this  world  that  I  do 
not  want.  In  the  great  libraries  where  the 
"  stacks  "  hold  hundreds  of  thousands  of  vol- 
umes, I  always  feel  happy  in  thinking  that 
there  are  carloads  of  books  that  I  have  no 
call  whatever  to  read.  You  can  only  read  a 
few  of  all  the  books  there  are  at  best,  and  for 
men  generally,  making  exception  of  the 
groups  of  specialists,  there  are  not  so  many 
truly  great  books  but  that  you  can  read  the 
most  of  them. 

Read  some  of  the  great  histories — Gibbon's 
Rome,"  and  then  this  new  history  of  the 
Empire  by  Ferrero,  which  is  just  coming 
out.  Read  Macaulay's  "  England,"  and 
Green's  "  Short  History  of  the  English 
People."  Read  Bancroft's  "  History  of  the 
United  States,"  and  John  Fiske's  fascinating 

[54] 


i^ijS  T6oo60 


volumes  on  our  early  history.  Read  the 
other  standard  histories,  giving  you  the 
movements  of  thought  and  life  in  many  lands 
and  times. 

Read  some  of  the  great  biographies,  Lock- 
hart's  "  Life  of  Sir  Walter  Scott,"  BoswelPs 
"  Life  of  Johnson  "  for  a  picture  of  London 
life  in  that  fruitful  period;  John  Morley's 
Life  of  Gladstone,"  Nicolay  and  Hay's 
Life  of  Lincoln,"  which  is  in  reality  a  his- 
tory of  the  whole  Civil  War.  Read  the  well- 
known  lives  of  the  men  who  have  actually 
made  history  by  their  personal  achievements. 
Read  the  best  of  the  essayists,  Carlyle  and 
Emerson,  Ruskin  and  Matthew  Arnold.  Read 
the  great  poets,  not  the  little  rhymesters 
whose  stuff  is  only  fit  to  be  set  to  ragtime 
and  sung  at  the  Orpheum — read  Shakespeare 
and  Milton,  Burns  and  Wordsworth,  Tenny- 
son and  Browning  until  their  best  poems  are 
like  familiar  songs  to  you.  I  spent  a  number 
of  years  on  Shakespeare,  reading  one  play 
a  week,  marking  it,  committing  certain  lines 
to  memory  and  then  going  over  it  all  again 

[55] 


C^e  i^oiing  jEan'ss  affair 

until  the  entire  play  had  become  familiar. 
Nothing  ever  did  so  much  for  my  own  style 
in  writing  and  speaking  as  this. 
Read  the  nature  books  by  master  hands,  not 
those  by  fakirs  or  apprentices — Thoreau 
and  John  Burroughs,  John  Muir  and  Henry 
Van  Dyke.  Read  the  great  novelists — Dick- 
ens and  Thackeray,  George  Eliot  and  An- 
thony Trollope — their  stories  never  grow 
old.  I  have  forty  odd  volumes  of  Anthony 
Trollope  on  my  own  shelves,  and  have  read 
most  of  them  three  or  four  times — his  easy, 
entertaining  style  and  his  realistic  sketches 
of  English  life  render  his  volumes  rewarding. 
Read  the  best  modern  story  writers,  Kipling 
and  Stevenson  and  Conan  Doyle.  I  read 
"  Treasure  Island  "  every  year  and  I  cannot 
see  but  that  I  enjoy  it  as  much  as  I  did  when 
it  first  came  out.  When  you  have  formed  the 
habit  of  living  with  the  leading  minds  in  any 
department  of  literature,  cultivating  their 
acquaintance  until  you  are  on  good  terms 
with  them  all,  the  work  of  the  penny-a-liners 
does  not  appeal  to  you. 

[56] 


f  fe  l3oofi$$ 


In  the  second  place  read  thoroughly  on  some 
one  period  of  the  world's  life  until  you  actu- 
ally live  in  it.  Read  the  history  of  it  until  you 
have  the  requisite  setting.  Read  biographies 
of  the  great  men  of  that  period.  Read  the 
poetry  which  came  forth  then  as  an  expres- 
sion of  its  life.  Read  any  great  novels  which 
dealt  with  the  issues  of  that  day.  Read  some 
good  book  of  travel  describing  the  situation, 
if  you  have  never  seen  it  yourself.  By  and 
by  that  section  of  the  life  of  your  race  will 
have  become  a  part  of  your  own  inner  con- 
sciousness as  much  as  the  life  of  your  own  lo- 
cality and  generation.  In  that  way  you  gradu- 
ally possess  yourself  of  those  elemental  and 
instinctive  convictions,  sentiments  and  aspira- 
tions which  underlie  all  human  progress. 
Some  years  ago  I  set  out  to  familiarize  my- 
self with  that  period  in  our  own  history 
which  led  up  to  the  Civil  War.  I  read  a  gen- 
eral history  of  it.  I  read  the  orations  of  Gar- 
rison and  Phillips,  Webster  and  Hayne, 
Calhoun  and  Sumner.  I  read  all  the  lives  of 
Lincoln  there  were,  Nicolay  and  Hay,  Hern- 

[57] 


C^e  goung  jmatt'g  affair 

don,  Holland,  John  T.  Morse,  Tarbell,  and 
all  the  rest.  I  read  Horace  Greeley's  "Ameri- 
can Conflict,"  Jefferson  Davis'  "  History  of 
the  Confederacy,"  Pollard's  "  Lost  Cause," 
"The  History  of  the  Civil  War"  by  the 
Count  of  Paris.  I  read  the  sermons  of 
Beecher  and  Theodore  Parker  during  that 
period.  I  reread  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe's 
"Uncle  Tom's  Cabin," and  Lowell's  and  Whit- 
tier's  anti-slavery  poems.  I  read  the  words 
of  the  popular  songs  and  national  airs  which 
were  then  produced.  A  friend  of  mine  had 
a  complete  file  of  the  Boston  Journal  for  the 
four  years  from  1861  to  1865  containing  the 
letters  of  Charles  Carlton  Coffin  as  a  field 
correspondent.  I  used  to  go  up  to  his  attic, 
and  laying  the  big  volumes  on  the  floor, 
stretch  out  beside  them  and  read  for  hours. 
I  read  Charles  A.  Dana's  and  Carl  Schurz's 
letters  for  the  same  period.  By  and  by  that 
whole  section  of  our  history  which  was  a  liv- 
ing thing  to  the  generation  preceding  my 
own  became  also  a  living  thing  to  me.  Once 
when  I  was  asked  on  short  notice  to  prepare 

[58] 


f  fj3  TBOO&JJ 


an  address  for  an  important  occasion  on 
"  The  Greatest  Man  of  the  Nineteenth  Cen- 
tury," it  did  not  take  me  five  minutes  to  de- 
cide on  my  man,  and  it  was  not  difficult  to 
prepare  the  address  out  of  the  material  ready 
to  hand  as  a  result  of  my  long  and  serious 
reading  upon  that  period. 
Take  any  fertile  section  of  the  life  of  the 
race,  the  Reign  of  Queen  Elizabeth  in  Eng- 
land, the  period  covered  by  the  struggle  of 
the  Netherlands  against  Spain,  the  time  of 
Napoleon  in  France,  or  the  work  of  Bis- 
marck in  Germany.  Resolve  that  you  will 
make  it  your  own  by  working  at  it  until 
those  events,  the  leading  men  and  women,  the 
literature  of  that  day,  the  bearing  of  the 
achievements  upon  the  history  of  the  world 
and  the  progress  of  the  race,  are  all  as  vivid 
to  you  as  something  which  happened  last 
night.  It  will  be  worth  ten  years  of  desul- 
tory reading  for  the  sake  of  amusement,  or 
merely  as  a  mode  of  innocently  passing  the 
time. 

In  the  third  place,  read  as  often  as  you  can 

[59] 


C^e  ^oung  jttan'js  affaftg 

with  some  definite  purpose  in  view.  There  is 
in  this  community  a  certain  club  which  has 
been  in  existence  more  than  forty  years.  It 
is  a  very  simple  affair,  made  up  of  thirty  odd 
members.  They  meet  once  in  two  weeks  dur- 
ing nine  months  in  the  year,  eat  a  plain  din- 
ner together,  for  which  two  members  of  the 
club  pay  in  turn.  Then  one  man  reads  a 
paper  on  some  topic  of  his  own  choosing  and 
the  members,  called  upon  in  turn,  discuss  it. 
The  meetings  of  this  Berkeley  Club  are  al- 
ways full  of  interest  and  profit.  There  are 
in  its  membership  a  few  college  professors, 
two  or  three  manufacturers,  several  lawyers, 
a  physician  or  two,  a  journalist,  two  bank- 
ers, several  men  in  wholesale  business,  two 
men  high  in  the  civil  life  of  the  state 
and  the  nation,  three  clergymen.  It  is  an 
inspiration  to  know  the  men  who  compose 
it,  and  it  is  a  serious  responsibility  to  read 
a  paper  for  their  criticism  and  discussion. 
It  was  my  good  fortune  last  summer  to 
spend  some  weeks  in  Russia.  When  I  came 
away,  while  all  the  scenes  there  were  fresh 

[60] 


§i$  1300fl!$ 


in  my  mind,  I  started  in  to  read  up  on  that 
country.  I  had  considerable  leisure,  for  I 
was  on  a  leave  of  absence.  I  read  books  by 
the  armful — a  history  of  Peter  the  Great,  a 
life  of  Catharine  the  Second,  the  history  of 
Napoleon's  campaign,  for  I  had  traversed 
the  road  of  his  retreat  from  Moscow ;  various 
accounts  of  the  political  methods  in  Russia; 
criticisms  of  their  art  and  music ;  treatises 
on  their  prison  system  in  Europe  and  Si- 
beria. I  read  more  of  Tolstoi,  of  Gorki,  of 
Sienkiewicz.  It  was  all  full  of  absorbing  in- 
terest and  I  carefully  took  notes  upon  it! 
When  it  came  my  turn  last  week  to  read  a 
paper  before  the  club  I  described,  I  found  it 
natural  and  easy  to  present  the  results  of  my 
special  study  and  travel  in  the  Russian  Em- 
pire. 

It  would  be  highly  advantageous  if  there 
were  groups  of  young  men  organized  for 
similar  ends  in  all  our  cities.  The  expense 
would  be  slight,  the  meetings  of  such  clubs 
could  be  made  full  of  interest  and  profit.  It 
would  be  a  great  advance  upon  the  Whist 

[61] 


%\)t  gouttg  jttan'js  affairs 

^  I  [■■■III  ^— !■■     >l..—— — i— .— — W— — ^  ■       —  ■  ■ 

Clubs  and  other  social  organizations  which 
eat  up  time  and  money  to  so  little  purpose. 
It  would  train  each  man  to  read  with  a  defi- 
nite purpose  in  view,  and  to  acquire  efficiency 
in  saying  something  tersely,  strongly  and 
attractively.  If  each  man  read  with  the 
thought  of  bringing  the  results  of  his  own 
independent  and  original  investigation  be- 
fore a  company  of  his  peers,  it  would  stimu- 
late intellectual  effort  in  the  whole  relation 
he  sustains  to  the  world  of  books. 
And  finally,  read  books  not  so  much  to  gain 
information — you  can  get  that  as  you  need 
it  at  any  time,  for  it  is  all  there,  cut  and 
dried,  in  the  encyclopedia ;  read  not  to  get 
ideas,  but  read  mainly  to  gain  intellectual 
and  moral  stimulus.  Read  in  this  mood  and 
the  great  books  will  increasingly  enable  you 
to  think  out  your  own  ideas. 
One  soon  tires  of  a  book  that  does  not  make 
him  feel  now  and  then  like  getting  up  and 
walking  the  floor  under  the  impulse  of  some 
larger  vision  of  truth.  He  wants  a  book 
which  will  arouse  and  move  him.    If  it  fails 

[62] 


$f£  1300fig 


utterly  in  that  he  soon  lays  it  aside  and  seeks 
something  else. 

Take  four  books  which  have  appeared  re- 
cently— Professor  George  H.  Palmer's  "  Life 
of  Alice  Freeman  Palmer,"  the  former  presi- 
dent of  Wellesley  College;  Professor  Fran- 
cis G.  Peabody's  Yale  Lectures  on  "  Jesus 
Christ  and  the  Christian  Character  " ;  Pro- 
fessor Rauschenbusch's  "  Christianity  and 
the  Social  Crisis  " ;  Robert  Hunter's  "  Pov- 
erty." These  are  all  recent  books ;  any  one 
of  them  would  move  you  deeply ;  any  one  of 
them  would  be  found  worthy  of  a  place  on 
your  shelves. 

Let  me  speak  also  these  two  last  words — you 
cannot  afford  in  the  face  of  the  noble,  in- 
spiring, stimulating  books  there  are  to  read, 
to  waste  time  on  a  weak  book  or  a  bad  book. 
The  decadent  novels  and  problem  plays — I 
know  they  deal  with  certain  phases  of  life. 
So  does  my  garbage  barrel !  I  have  one  in  my 
back  yard,  but  I  do  not  care  to  eat  out  of 
it,  and  I  do  not  want  it  in  my  study.  Why 
nose  around  among  rotten  apples  for  a  pos- 

[63] 


C^e  goung  jttan'g  £Uait$ 


sible  good  bite  when  there  are  whole  boxes 
of  splendid  red-cheeked  fruit  standing  along- 
side! I  do  not  want  to  read  a  book  that 
leaves  a  bad  taste  in  my  mind  any  more  than 
I  want  to  eat  a  spoiled  oyster  which  leaves 
a  bad  taste  in  my  mouth. 
In  your  reading  you  will  be  stupid  if  you  do 
not  learn  to  read,  to  understand  and  to  en- 
joy the  greatest  book,  not  of  one  period,  but 
of  all  the  centuries.  I  say  this  not  because  it 
is  the  proper  thing  for  a  clergyman  to  say, 
but  simply  because  it  is  true.  I  have  read 
books  by  the  thousand  and  there  is  no  single 
volume  which  has  yielded  me  so  much  in  cul- 
tivating a  good  style,  in  stimulating  thought, 
in  shaping  principle  and  in  lifting  the  ideals 
high  as  the  Holy  Bible. 

If  I  were  told  that  I  were  to  be  set  down  on 
an  island  with  only  one  book  for  the  rest  of 
my  life,  the  choice  would  be  instantly  made. 
Where  is  there  any  other  single  volume  which 
has  in  it  orations  like  those  of  Moses  and 
Isaiah,  songs  like  those  of  David,  a  drama 
like  that   of  Job,   such  well  told  stories  as 

[64] 


f  its  TSOOttf 


those  of  Joseph,  Samson  and  Ruth,  such 
shrewd  moral  sayings  as  are  contained  in 
the  Book  of  Proverbs,  such  masterly  letters 
as  those  of  Paul  and  John !  And  there  is 
nowhere  on  earth  a  volume  containing  such 
parables  and  pictures,  such  appeals  to  the 
will  and  such  profound  spiritual  insights  as 
we  find  in  the  recorded  words  of  Him  who 
spake  as  never  man  spake. 
If  you  find  the  Bible  dull,  you  haven't 
learned  to  read  it!  If  you  say  you  do  not 
believe  in  it,  you  do  not  know  what  is  there! 
Read  it  not  because  it  will  please  God  in 
some  magical  way  —  read  it  because  the 
thoughts  and  feelings,  the  purposes  and  aspi- 
rations which  it  will  put  into  your  mind  and 
heart  will  renew  your  life  as  by  the  transfu- 
sion of  blood.  It  will  make  you  wise  unto 
moral  completeness ;  it  will  furnish  you  thor- 
oughly for  every  good  work ;  it  will  give  you 
life  abundant  and  eternal. 


[65] 


$te  Monty 


[67] 


CHAPTER  FOURTH 


f  (is  jftone? 


HERE  are  four  kinds  of 
people  in  the  world.  There 
are  the  poor  poor.  They 
have  no  money,  and  they 
have  nothing  else  in  the 
way  of  intelligence,  aspi- 
ration and  affection  to  make  life  worth  while. 
There  are  the  rich  poor  —  they  have  no 
money  either  to  speak  of  but  they  have 
thoughts,  loves,  activities,  appreciation  for 
and  joy  in  the  sky,  the  hills,  books,  friends 
and  God.  Some  of  the  happiest  people  I  have 
ever  known  were  rich  poor  people.  There  are 
the  poor  rich — they  have  money,  lots  of  it, 
and  nothing  else.  When  you  ask  "  How 
much  are  they  worth,"  if  you  mean  how 
much  are  the  things  they  own  worth,  the  an- 
swer might  stretch  out  into  six  or  seven  fig- 
ures. But  if  you  mean  how  much  are  they 
worth  by  virtue  of  the  qualities  of  mind  and 

[69] 


C^e  goxmg  Jttan'g  affair 

heart  they  can  show,  they  do  not  inventory 
very  large.  Then  there  are  the  rich  rich — 
they  have  money  and  they  have  aims,  pur- 
poses, interests,  which  make  life  full,  sweet 
and  noble.  It  is  well  to  look  over  the  field  at 
the  start  and  decide  in  which  class  you  pro- 
pose to  live. 

Money  is  stored  up  life.  If  you  work  hard 
for  a  day  and  receive  five  dollars  for  it,  that 
gold  piece  is  so  much  of  your  own  life  ex- 
pressed in  terms  which  all  the  world  under- 
stands. You  have  put  into  it  energy,  intelli- 
gence, fidelity  if  you  really  earned  the  gold 
piece — it  is  that  much  of  your  life !  And  you 
can  make  it  minister  to  your  life  in  a  legiti- 
mate reaction.  The  gold  piece  will  put  food 
in  your  mouth  to  repair  waste,  it  will  put  a 
hat  on  your  head,  or  offer  books  to  your 
mind,  or  travel  to  your  wish  for  a  broader 
outlook  and  experience.  You  cast  your  ef- 
fort on  the  waters  and  the  gold  piece  brings 
it  back  to  you  in  some  other  form  which  you 
prize. 

You  can  if  you  will  ma^ke  your  gold  piece 

[70] 


^  pumtv 


minister  to  other  lives,  education  for  the 
child,  medical  attendance  for  the  sick,  com- 
fort for  the  needy — it  will  mean  life  for  each 
one.  You  can  also  relate  yourself  to  the  ac- 
tivities of  men  through  your  gold  piece.  If 
you  spend  it  in  a  saloon,  you  start  other  men 
to  making  beer  and  whiskey  and  keeping 
grog  shops.  If  you  spend  it  in  a  gambling 
den,  or  brothel,  you  swell  the  demand  for 
those  forms  of  vice  to  the  extent  of  your 
gold  piece.  If  you  spend  it  for  groceries  or 
clothing  or  books,  you  start  men  to  pro- 
ducing those  wholesome  articles.  You  have 
power  over  the  whole  world  of  activity  to  the 
extent  of  your  gold  piece.  Money,  therefore, 
represents  the  deposit  of  life,  a  potential 
ministry  to  life,  and  the  power  to  quicken 
and  enlist  the  energies  of  other  lives. 
You  see  then  how  vital  is  the  relation  between 
money  and  manhood.  When  I  see  piled  up 
in  the  mint  or  in  some  large  city  bank  hun- 
dreds and  thousands  of  dollars  in  gold,  I  feel 
like  taking  off  my  hat.  Here  is  that  into 
which  great  numbers  of  men  have  put  their 

[71] 


C^e  goung  jwan'js  affaftis 

lives!  Here  is  that  which  would  minister  to 
the  development  and  enlargement  of  life  on 
a  broad  scale.  Here  is  power  to  start  into 
being  activities  hurtful  or  helpful  to  many 
lives.  Never  speak  slightingly  or  scornfully 
of  money — it  is  the  mark  of  an  ignoramus  or 
a  rascal.  Money  and  manhood  are  bound  up 
together  for  weal  or  for  woe. 
There  are  four  relationships  which  a  young 
man  sustains  to  money.  First  of  all  he  re- 
lates himself  to  it  by  the  money  he  earns — 
earn  it  honestly.  I  take  it  for  granted  that 
every  young  fellow  who  had  strength  enough 
of  mind  to  come  here  tonight  is  either  earn- 
ing his  own  money  or  intends  to  earn  it.  If 
by  any  chance  some  parasite  has  come  in, 
who  is  content  to  have  his  father  or  other 
rich  relative  give  him  money,  or  who  is 
merely  waiting  for  that  relative  to  die  and 
leave  him  all  he  needs,  it  is  hardly  worth 
while  for  me  to  waste  powder  and  shot  on 
him.  He  does  not  come  within  the  definition 
anyhow — I  am  speaking  to  young  men,  and 
he  is  neither  young  nor  a  man,  no  matter 

[72] 


1$i&  pLontv 


when  he  was  born  or  what  kind  of  clothing 
he  wears. 

It  is  the  office  of  young  manhood  so  to  invest 
its  strength  as  to  bring  forth  an  equivalent, 
so  to  serve  that  it  earns  what  it  has.  Any 
young  man  who  is  not  intent  upon  that 
effort  as  soon  as  he  can  get  in  shape  for  it, 
is  denying  his  youth  and  his  sex.  In  the  town 
where  I  grew  up  a  certain  man  who  had 
sound  health,  a  fine  mind,  an  honest  heart 
and  a  rich  father,  was  bewailing  the  fact 
that  he  had  not  amounted  to  anything. 
"  The  best  thing  my  father  could  have  done 
for  me,"  he  said  once,  "  would  have  been  to 
have  given  me  half  a  dollar  and  then  kicked 
me  into  the  street."  His  friend  replied, 
"  George,  why  didn't  you  take  the  half  dol- 
lar and  kick  yourself  into  the  street  ? " 
Earning  his  way  would  have  made  a  man 
of  him  but  he  saw  it  only  after  it  was  too 
late. 

Earn  your  own  money  then  if  you  would 
make  it  a  ministry  to  manhood.  Never  think 
of  sitting  around  waiting  to  inherit  it — it  is 

[73] 


C^e  f  otmg  jWan'js  affair 


the  mark  of  a  decadent.  Never  think  of  set- 
ting out  to  marry  it.  It  may  be  well  enough 
to  marry  a  woman  with  a  fortune  thrown  in 
if  your  own  honest  affection  happens  to  steer 
you  that  way,  but  it  is  disgraceful  to  marry 
a  fortune  with  a  woman  thrown  in.  A  man 
who  sells  himself  is  as  much  lower  than  the 
girl  on  the  street  who  sells  herself  as  he  is 
stronger  than  she.  And  the  man  who  does 
not  know  the  joy  of  taking  the  girl  of  his 
choice  to  the  home  which  his  own  energies 
have  provided,  even  though  it  is  no  more 
than  a  three-room  cottage,  and  then  of  car- 
ing for  her  until  he  can  give  her  all  manner 
of  advantages,  misses  half  the  joy  of  life.  If 
he  is  compelled  to  have  all  these  good  things 
paid  for  by  her  rich  papa,  he  is  deprived  of 
a  large  element  of  the  sweetness  which  goes 
with  married  life.  Earn  your  own  happiness, 
if  you  would  find  it  satisfying. 
Earn  your  own  money,  I  say,  by  honest 
effort  —  beware  of  the  short  cuts.  These 
"  get  rich  quick  "  schemes  rob  about  ninety- 
nine  people  out  of  a  hundred  of  their  money 

[74] 


^fjs  piomy 


— some  promoter  gets  it.  And  the  one  man 
out  of  the  hundred  who  makes  money  com- 
monly loses  his  own  soul  in  the  process  of 
getting  something  for  nothing.  The  man  who 
whispers  in  your  ear  some  rare  opportunity 
in  copper  stock  or  in  mining  shares  or  in 
some  invention  which  is  to  make  everybody 
wealthy,  ought  to  be  in  better  business.  You 
had  better  show  him  the  door  while  you  still 
have  your  money  in  your  pocket  and  an  hon- 
est purpose  in  your  heart. 
Earn  it — don't  gamble  for  it,  either  at  the 
race  track  or  poker  table,  the  bucket  shop 
or  through  buying  stocks  on  margin !  You 
cannot  afford  to  have  any  bastard  dollars  in 
your  pocket — they  are  as  disgraceful  to  you 
as  illegitimate  children.  You  ought  to  be 
able  to  feel  that  every  dollar  has  come  to 
you  by  the  investment  of  energy,  intelligence, 
fidelity.  You  must  feel  that  you  have  given 
some  valuable  equivalent,  which  cannot  be 
said  of  any  dollar  won  through  gambling. 
Jerry  McAuley,  who  saw  the  seamy  side  of 
life  in  New  York  for  a  long  period  of  years, 

75] 


W$z  goung  jftan'g  affair 

used  to  say — "  I  have  seen  drunkards  become 
sober,  hundreds  of  them,  thieves  become  hon- 
est and  libertines  become  pure,  but  I  could 
count  all  the  gamblers  I  ever  saw  reform,  on 
the  fingers  of  one  hand."  Shun  the  whole 
dirty  business  of  gambling  as  you  would 
shun  leprosy.  You  cannot  afford  to  carry  a 
piece  of  money  in  your  pocket  which  is  not 
clean. 

Earn  it — do  not  steal  it !  It  ought  not  to  be 
necessary  to  say  that  here  in  a  Christian 
church  nearly  forty  centuries  after  God  said 
from  the  top  of  Mount  Sinai — "  Thou  shalt 
not  steal."  It  is  necessary!  My  experience 
of  twenty  years  in  the  ministry  dealing  with 
boys  and  young  men,  having  them  confide  in 
me  and  appeal  to  me  to  help  them  out  of  ter- 
rible situations,  has  led  me  to  know  that 
when  I  stand  before  any  congregation  like 
this,  there  are  young  fellows  present  who  are 
stealing  from  their  employers.  That  young 
fellow  is  here  to-night — several  of  him.  The 
only  salvation  is  for  him  to  stop  now,  make 
restitution,  and  begin  to  walk  so  that  he  can 

[76] 


(#  internet 


look  God  and  man  in  the  face  whenever  his 
accounts  are  audited. 

A  prominent  minister  in  a  large  Eastern  city 
picked  out  twenty  of  the  leading  business 
men  and  addressed  to  them  this  question, 
"  What  is  the  greatest  need  of  the  business 
world  today?  "  And  when  the  replies  came 
back  every  man  of  them,  with  not  a  single 
exception,  said  "  Personal  honesty."  They 
knew  something  of  the  stealing  which  is 
going  on.  Let  me  appeal  to  you  as  one  who 
has  heard  the  voices  of  boys  and  young  men 
tremble  and  break  in  their  confessions,  who 
has  seen  their  faces  ashy  white  over  what 
they  feared  was  in  store  for  them,  who  has 
watched  them  with  their  minds  intent  on 
State's  Prison,  wondering  if  they  would  soon 
be  there — let  me  appeal  to  you,  "  Never  lose 
out  of  your  own  heart  the  horror  of  taking 
what  is  not  yours !  "  When  you  first  begin 
to  borrow  money  out  of  the  drawer  you  in- 
tend to  put  it  back — they  all  do — and  per- 
haps for  a  time  you  do  put  it  back.  The  first 
time  you  take  it  out  of  the  drawer  it  costs 

[77] 


C^e  goung  jHan'g  affair 

you  a  struggle.  The  horror  of  stealing, 
however,  is  dimmed  by  that  practice;  by- 
and-by  it  fades  out  altogether;  and  under 
temptation  you  at  last  become  actually  and 
deliberately  a  thief.  Earn  your  money  hon- 
estly— there  is  no  joy  in  any  other  sort  of 
wealth. 

In  the  second  place  a  young  man  relates  him- 
self to  money  by  what  he  spends — spend  it 
conscientiously !  Of  all  the  fool  ambitions 
which  sometime  have  their  hour  with  young 
men  that  of  being  known  as  "  a  good  spend- 
er "  is  the  emptiest.  The  young  fellow  who 
lets  his  money  slip  through  his  fingers  easily, 
recklessly;  the  man  who  robs  his  employer, 
perhaps,  in  order  to  have  plenty  of  automo- 
bile rides  and  road-house  suppers,  and  then 
rides  to  prison  to  think  it  over  for  a  term  of 
years,  is  very  commonly  known  about  town 
as  "  a  good  spender." 

Men  laugh  at  them,  and  even  the  girls  have 
their  own  ideas  on  the  subject.  They  know 
that  the  young  fellow  who  sends  them  Ameri- 
can  Beauties   when   he   can   scarcely   afford 

[78] 


is  pionzy 


dandelions  is  simply  indicating  that  he  has 
more  money  than  brains.  When  these  very 
girls  come  to  select  husbands  they  prefer  men 
who  have  more  sense.  There  are  lots  of  girls 
in  this  world  who  are  not  half  as  silly  as  cer- 
tain foolish  men  think  they  are — they  quietly 
laugh  in  their  sleeves  at  the  "  good  spend- 
ers," even  when  the  money  is  being  spent  on 
them. 

California  has  the  undesirable  reputation  of 
being  the  most  extravagant  state  in  the 
Union.  Even  New  York  is  less  lavish  in  pro- 
portion to  its  means,  for  New  York  is  old 
and  rich,  while  we  are  just  in  our  teens. 
High  school  boys  and  girls  think  they  must 
entertain  with  the  lavishness  of  well-seasoned 
society  habitues.  Boys  and  girls  in  grammar 
school  have  their  ideas  of  pocket  money 
which  stagger  the  fathers  and  mothers 
brought  up  on  a  simple  and  more  wholesome 
regime.  You  see  people  flashing  along  the 
street  in  their  own  automobiles  and  you  won-" 
der  how  they  can  afford  it — they  cannot  af- 
ford it ;  they  are  simply  exhibiting  their  f ool^ 

[79] 


C^e  goung  jftan'js  affair 

ishness  at  a  rate  which  breaks  all  the  records. 
Men  sometimes  blame  it  all  on  the  women, 
and  while  they  have  the  most  to  do  with  set- 
ting the  pace  of  expenditure  a  man  is  a  fool 
who  allows  himself  to  go  down  in  financial 
and  moral  defeat  because  of  a  woman,  even 
though  the  woman  is  his  wife.  We  are  reap- 
ing the  fruits  of  this  extravagance  in  those 
revelations  of  dishonesty  made  recently  in 
various  high  schools  and  in  the  exposures  of 
dishonesty  high  up  among  club  men  and 
young  fellows  in  San  Francisco.  Extrava- 
gant spending  has  become  a  fruitful  source 
of  temptation  which  in  turn  has  led  to  ter- 
rible dishonesty. 

"  Why  do  you  spend  your  money  for  that 
which  is  not  bread?  "  Bread  is  the  symbol  of 
all  that  is  wholesome.  Bread  satisfies,  bread 
strengthens,  bread  enlarges.  How  much  of 
a  young  fellow's  money  goes  for  that  which 
does  neither!  He  is  not  satisfied;  he  is  not 
strengthened;  he  is  not  enlarged.  It  ought 
to  be  as  much  a  matter  of  intelligence  and 
conscience  to  part  with  your  money  wisely 

[80]" 


i^te  jttottei? 


and  usefully  as  it  was  a  matter  of  intelligence 
and  conscience  to  earn  it  in  the  first  place. 
When  I  was  in  college  I  was  kept  on  very 
short  rations — too  short  I  thought  then,  and 
I  think  so  still.  The  stern  f  rugality,  however, 
was  not  without  its  advantages.  My  room 
mate  in  the  senior  year  inherited  some  twenty 
odd  thousand  dollars  from  his  father's  es- 
tate. He  had  a  warm  heart;  he  had  not  a 
single  vicious  taste  or  habit  that  I  ever  dis- 
covered. He  used  his  money  freely  in  a  way 
that  made  me  envy  him.  He  wore  good 
clothes,  when  my  trousers  bagged  at  the 
knees.  He  took  in  all  the  good  shows  that 
came  to  town,  when  I  was  at  home  reading  a 
book  and  wishing  that  I  was  at  the  show.  He 
showered  gracious  attentions  which  made 
him  exceedingly  popular  with  the  young  la- 
dies. We  left  college  some  twenty-five  years 
ago.  I  was  the  best  man  at  his  wedding  a  few 
years  later.  Ten  years  ago  he  wrote  to  me 
a  pitiful  letter — it  must  have  cost  him  a 
struggle  to  put  it  down  in  black  and  white 
for  he  had  a  large  amount  of  personal  pride. 

[81] 


C^e  goimg  jfKtan'ss  affairs 

He  asked  me  if  I  could  send  him  fifty  dollars 
for  he  was  in  a  desperate  situation  financial- 
ly. He  was  not  a  bad  fellow  in  any  sense, 
but  he  had  not  learned  how  to  spend  his 
money. 

With  the  hundreds  of  children  hungry,  ill- 
clad,  ignorant ;  with  the  hundreds  of  men  and 
women  straining  every  nerve  to  live  but  go- 
ing down  in  defeat ;  with  every  philanthropic 
institution  in  need  of  funds  to  make  its  work 
more  widely  effective,  it  becomes  a  sin  and  a 
shame  to  spend  money,  no  matter  how  much 
you  have,  foolishly,  recklessly,  wantonly. 
Put  into  your  spending  your  best  brains  and 
conscience.  Money  is  the  stored  up  life  of 
the  men  and  women  who  earned  it;  money  is 
potential  ministry  that  might  be  rendered  to 
those  lives  which  suffer  for  the  lack  of  it; 
money  is  power  to  quicken  activities  whole- 
some and  helpful  or  vicious  and  hurtful. 
Therefore,  put  wisdom  and  conscience  into 
the  investment  of  every  dollar  you  spend. 
In  the  third  place  the  young  man  relates 
himself   to   money   by   what  he   saves — save 

[82] 


^te  ffiomy 


prudently!  You  will  see  young  fellows  hop- 
ping around  in  society,  chirping  to  the  girls 
like  so  many  canaries,  each  one  dressed  up 
until  he  would  inventory  one  hundred  and 
twenty-five  dollars,  perhaps,  as  he  stands 
forth  in  his  swallowtail  ready  for  the  Friday 
Night  Assembly,  and  yet  many  of  them 
hardly  know  what  a  bank  book  looks  like. 
If  any  one  of  them  went  to  open  an  account 
in  a  savings  bank  he  would  have  to  be  told 
three  times  where  to  sign  his  name.  He  is 
having  a  good  time,  but  he  is  postponing 
marriage  and  a  home.  He  is  putting  the  suc- 
cess which  might  be  his  a  long  way  off  — 
so  far  that  he  may  never  overtake  it  in  this 
life.  He  is  missing  the  larger  things  in 
growth,  in  travel,  in  enrichment  for  himself 
and  for  those  other  lives  which  are  bound 
up  with  his  own,  for  the  sake  of  the  mere 
gratification  which  may  be  in  no  sense  wicked 
but  is  unworthy  of  such  a  sacrifice. 
I  make  it  a  point  to  urge  every  young  man 
to  save  his  money  by  taking  out  life  insur- 
ance early.    I  took  out  my  first  policy  long 

[83]" 


€^e  goung  jman'g  affaftg 


before  I  was  married  — I  hoped  to  be  some- 
time. It  was  a  twenty-year-endowment  and 
it  matures  this  very  year.  And  when  I  saw 
my  way  clear  I  took  out  another  and  another 
and  another.  It  is  not  only  a  protection  to 
the  wife  and  children  you  have  or  may  have, 
if  you  should  be  called  away  suddenly ;  it 
is  a  good  way  to  save  money  regularly.  It 
does  not  promise  as  large  a  return  in  the 
percentage  of  the  dividend  as  that  copper 
stock  or  mining  share  some  plausible  fellow 
is  trying  to  sell  you,  but  it  is  a  great  deal 
surer.  When  you  take  out  a  policy  and  pass 
the  medical  examination,  you  will  begin  to 
arrange  to  meet  your  premium  year  by  year, 
and  thus  you  will  save  steadily.  Wise  busi- 
ness men  insure  their  homes  and  their  stores 
against  fire  though  they  may  go  through  life 
and  never  have  a  fire.  Every  man  will  die 
sometime  and  every  man  is  growing  older 
all  the  time.  The  face  of  an  endowment 
policy  will  be  very  convenient  when  you  are 
twenty   or  forty  years   older  than   you   are 

now. 

[84] 


|#j3  ffiLowy 


It  gives  a  young  fellow  confidence,  self-re- 
spect, and  strengthens  his  resolution  to  have 
accumulated  something  in  a  policy,  a  sav- 
ings bank,  a  house  and  lot  or  in  some  safe 
bonds  which  older  and  wiser  men  advise  him 
to  purchase.  The  financial  effects  of  it  are 
good  and  the  moral  effects  better  still.  He 
begins  to  feel  that  he  has  a  stake  in  life.  He 
has  been  providing  for  his  own  interests  and 
for  those  of  the  family  he  has  or  may  have; 
and  there  is  a  satisfaction  in  that  which  goes 
away  ahead  of  the  purchase  of  American 
Beauty  roses,  automobile  rides,  theater  par- 
ties or  wine  suppers.  If  you  would  relate 
your  own  inner  life  to  money  in  a  wholesome 
way  save  prudently. 

And  finally  a  young  man  relates  himself  to 
money  by  what  he  gives  —  give  generously 
and  systematically.  Money  is  one  of  the 
most  useful  servants  in  the  world,  but  it  is 
a  terrible  and  a  degrading  master.  When 
money  has  mastered  a  man  it  puts  a  look  in 
his  eye  that  is  like  cold  steel  and  it  draws 
lines  around  his  mouth  which  make  it  look 

[85] 


C^e  gouna,  ittan'g  affair 

like  a  trap.  You  may  earn  honestly,  spend 
wisely  and  save  prudently  and  still  allow  mon- 
ey to  be  your  master  instead  of  making  it 
the  servant  of  moral  purpose,  the  messenger 
of  good  will.  You  must  couple,  therefore, 
with  the  other  three  habits  formed  early  and 
steadfastly  that  of  giving  generously  and 
systematically. 

I  would  urge  every  young  man  to  begin  to 
give  a  tenth  of  his  income.  The  Jews  did  it 
and  they  were  blessed  temporally  and  spiritu- 
ally. They  are  still  the  bankers  of  the  world 
and  they  formerly  held  the  right  of  the  line 
in  moral  insight  and  spiritual  passion.  The 
Mormons  did  it,  and  with  all  the  moral  de- 
facements of  their  system  they  have  trans- 
formed arid  Utah  into  a  garden  of  prosper- 
ity beyond  the  wildest  dreams  of  the  founders 
of  that  community.  "  Honor  the  Lord  with 
thy  substance  and  with  the  first  fruits  of  all 
thine  increase,  so  shall  thy  barns  be  filled  with 
plenty  and  thy  presses  shall  burst  out  with 
new  wine."  "  Bring  all  your  tithes  into  the 
storehouse,  that  there  may  be  meat  in  mine 

[86]' 


i^te  pLonty 


house,  and  prove  me  now  herewith,  saith  the 
Lord  of  Hosts,  and  see  if  I  will  not  open  you 
the  windows  of  heaven,  and  pour  you  out  a 
blessing,  that  there  shall  not  be  room  enough 
to  receive  it."  Whenever  a  dollar  comes  to 
you  set  aside  ten  cents  of  it  for  charity  and 
benevolence.  Keep  that  fund  sacredly,  and 
then  use  the  other  ninety  cents  to  spend  or  to 
save.  You  will  find  that  you  will  be  greatly 
blessed  financially  and  morally  in  that  sys- 
tematic method. 

I  began  to  give  that  way  twenty  years  ago 
when  my  own  income  was  very  small.  I  kept 
it  up  when  it  cost  me  a  hard  struggle.  I 
have  earned  all  the  money  I  have  ever  had 
since  I  left  my  father's  house.  I  have  not 
stolen  it,  nor  gambled  for  it,  nor  inherited  it, 
nor  married  a  dollar  of  it.  I  have  been  great- 
ly blessed  in  that  systematic  giving,  and  I 
commend  it  to  all  men,  young  and  old.  If 
you  would  keep  money  your  servant  and  not 
allow  it  to  master  you,  begin  early,  when  you 
are  not  independently  rich,  thus  forming  a 

habit   of   systematic  benevolence.    You  will 

[87] 


€^e  goims  Jttan'ss  affairs 

come  to  rejoice  in  a  higher  and  a  better 
prosperity  for  the  blessing  of  God  upon 
fidelity  and  obedience  is  one  that  maketh  rich 
and  bringeth  no  sorrow  therewith. 
In  setting  out  to  earn  your  own  money  hon- 
estly, to  spend  it  wisely,  to  save  some  of  it 
prudently,  and  to  give  a  certain  proportion 
of  it  generously,  expect  and  accept  a  certain 
amount  of  struggle,  hardship,  sacrifice. 
What  are  your  health  and  ambition  for  but 
to  face  and  conquer  all  this!  When  any 
young  man's  main  interest  is  in  avoiding  pain 
and  seeking  ease ;  when  he  is  always  insisting 
on  comfort  and  grasping  for  luxury,  he  does 
not  deserve  to  be  young.  He  is  not  young  — 
he  is  already  old  and  defeated.  Accept  the 
struggle  and  the  sacrifice!  Rejoice  in  it  all, 
for  that  is  what  transforms  pulp  into  reli- 
able fiber,  boys  into  men ! 


[88] 


W  Kttmtions 


[89] 


It  was  a  wise  man  who  wrote  long  ago — 
There  is  a  time  to  weep  and  a  time  to  laugh, 
A  time  to  mourn  and  a  time  to  dance; 
God  has  made  everything  beautiful  in  its  time. 


[90] 


CHAPTER    FIFTH 


f  i$  matatiovft 


OU  see  the  rhythmic  process 
he  had  in  mind.  It  is  the 
way  of  the  world  that  there 
should  be  action  and  re- 
action, alternating  cur- 
rents, each  with  its  special 
quality.  The  man  who  sets  out  for  a  life  of 
unbroken  service  and  strenuousness  breaks 
himself  in  the  attempt.  The  bow  must  be 
unstrung  occasionally  if  it  is  to  retain  its 
spring.  Varying  moods  must  alternate,  each 
in  the  interest  of  the  other.  A  man  who  weeps 
all  the  time,  or  laughs  all  the  time,  who  slaves 
all  the  time  or  plays  all  the  time,  is  out  of 
line  with  the  divine  purpose,  out  of  line  with 
the  constitution  of  things  as  they  are.  There 
is  a  time  for  seriousness  and  a  time  for  gay- 
ety ;  a  time  for  work  and  a  time  for  play. 
"  He  has  made  everything  beautiful  in  its 
time,"  —  each  mood  and  each  interest  gains 

[91] 


W$t  goung  jHan'0  affafttf 

its  beauty  and  its  value  by  being  held  to  its 
own  place  in  the  large  scheme  by  a  sound 
sense  of  proportion. 

I  would  suggest  at  the  outset  certain  general 
principles  which  I  believe  every  sensible  man 
will  accept.  First  of  all  our  distinctions  in 
the  matter  of  amusements  must  be  sound  and 
real,  not  arbitrary  and  artificial.  Tell  the 
boy  it  is  right  to  play  croquet  with  wooden 
balls  on  green  grass,  but  wrong  to  play 
billiards  with  ivory  balls  on  green  cloth,  and 
he  will  insist  on  knowing  the  reason  why. 
Tell  him  it  is  right  to  play  dominoes  using 
ivory  blocks  with  spots  on  them,  but  that  it 
is  wrong  to  play  whist  using  pieces  of  card- 
board with  spots  on  them,  he  will  insist  on 
having  the  distinction  brought  out.  There 
is  no  valid  distinction  forthcoming.  Our  dis- 
tinctions must  be  sound.  They  must  hold 
water. 

In  the  second  place  the  attitude  must  be  a 
positive  one  not  merely  negative.  It  is  not 
enough  to  steer  clear  of  the  more  striking 
evils,  merely  making  our  recreations  harm- 

[92] 


l$i$  isecreatfonss 


less.  Playing  tiddledywinks  or  croldnole  or 
button  is  harmless,  but  you  can  scarcely  call 
it  recreation.  Recreation  must  bring  pleas- 
ure, real,  live,  human  pleasure,  with  fire  in 
its  eye  and  red  blood  in  its  veins.  "  Our 
bodies  are  good,  every  function  of  them,  and 
the  pleasure  which  comes  from  an  intelligent 
and  conscientious  use  of  them  is  God's  own 
seal  upon  that  right  use."  Our  minds  are 
good  and  that  eager  joy  which  comes  to 
them  in  certain  forms  of  recreation  is  a  thing 
to  thank  high  heaven  for  —  high  heaven  or- 
dained it  so.  Our  social  natures  which  find 
expression  in  and  become  enlarged  by  whole- 
some recreation  are  meant  to  glorify  the 
divine  purpose  and  enjoy  it  forever.  The 
relaxations  of  young  people  must  be  of  such 
a  form  that  they  will  be  desirable  and  pleas- 
urable, not  merely  harmless. 
In  the  third  place  there  must  be  a  sense  of 
proportion.  Amusements  at  their  best  are 
only  the  flowers  on  the  table  and  not  the 
roast.  You  cannot  live  on  the  bouquet.  The 
young  fellow  who  spends  all  his  spare  time 

[93] 


C^e  goung  0ianf$  attains 

and  spare  cash  on  recreation,  thinking  of  it 
when  he  ought  to  be  thinking  of  some  serious 
business  is  in  a  fair  way  to  sleep  in  the  hall 
bedroom  a  good  while.  You  will  not  succeed 
because  you  can  play  billiards  or  bridge  or 
dance  better  than  any  young  fellow  in  town. 
The  world  is  not  waiting  to  give  its  money, 
its  confidence  or  its  gratitude  to  those  chaps. 
It  has  its  eagle  eye  on  the  more  serious  busi- 
ness of  life  and  that  is  what  yields  the  most 
satisfying  return  in  every  man's  career.  "  A 
time  to  laugh  and  a  time  to  dance,"  the  wise 
man  said  —  that  time  is  not  all  the  time  nor 
at  two  o'clock  in  the  morning  when  there  is 
work  to  be  done  next  day.  In  recreations 
even  of  the  wholesome  sort  there  must  be  sub- 
ordination of  that  which  is  incidental  to  that 
which  is  essential. 

In  the  fourth  place  every  recreation  ought 
to  bring  more  than  it  takes.  Recreation  — 
re-creation !  What  a  vital  thing  it  is !  It  is 
meant  to  furnish  the  man  a  fuller  supply  of 
energy,  enthusiasm,  fitness  for  hard  manly 
effort    next    day.     That    definition,    I    fear, 

[94] 


pi3  IKecreattonjs 


would  put  many  of  the  popular  recreations 
out  of  the  running.  But  it  is  a  legitimate 
test.  My  recreations  must  be  such  that  the 
body  is  recruited  not  weakened,  the  mind 
made  more  alert  not  blurred,  the  moral 
nature  kept  keen  and  alive  not  dulled  nor 
blinded.  The  recreation  must  bring  real  live 
human  pleasure  and  yet  stand  this  test.  Each 
amusement  must  bring  more  than  it  takes 
away. 

In  the  fifth  place  my  pleasure  cannot  be 
gained  at  another's  loss.  The  day  has  gone 
by  everywhere  when  men  and  women  can  find 
pleasure  in  being  cannibals.  No  matter  how 
hungry  they  are  they  do  not  want  to  eat  the 
flesh  or  drink  the  blood  of  their  fellows.  The 
whole  idea  is  repulsive  and  there  are  better 
things  to  eat  and  drink.  The  day  has  gone 
by  among  really  civilized  people  —  there  are 
people  who  wear  collars  and  cuffs  and  eat 
with  their  forks,  who  are  not  genuinely  civil- 
ized —  when  men  and  women  can  take  pleas- 
ure in  any  amusement  which  means  the  loss 
of  money  or  modesty,  of  aspiration  or  fitness 

[95] 


C^e  goimg  jftan'g  affairs 

for  the  highest  things,  to  a  fellow-being. 
Money,  modesty,  aspiration,  fitness  for  the 
highest  things  are  elements  in  life,  as  vital 
as  the  flesh  and  blood  of  the  body. 
The  man  who  gambles  and  goes  home  happy 
because  he  has  gotten  some  other  man's 
money  into  his  pocket  and  has  sent  him  home 
poor,  is  a  cannibal — he  derives  pleasure  from 
eating  his  fellow.  The  men  who  gather  in 
the  theater  and  pay  to  see  girls  come  out  on 
the  stage  dressed  —  I  mean  undressed  —  in  a 
way  that  means  the  destruction  of  that  fine 
modesty  which  is  a  woman's  crown,  are  can- 
nibals. For  the  gratification  of  their  own 
desires  they  have  eaten  up  the  modesty  of 
those  girls,  who  have  not  strength  enough 
or  sense  enough  to  resist  the  temptation  to 
sell  their  womanly  delicacy  for  so  much  a 
week.  You  would  cut  off  your  right  hand  and 
do  your  best  with  your  left  rather  than  have 
your  wife  or  daughter,  your  sister  or  sweet- 
heart, expose  herself  in  that  way  for  pay. 
You  are  a  cannibal  if  for  your  own  gratifica- 
tion you  help  destroy  that  fine  modesty  in 

196] 


i^te  iSccteatfoitiS 


any  woman.    Carry  the  principle  all  the  way 
through — right-minded,   honest-hearted   men 
and  women  will  not  find  pleasure  in  the  loss 
or  degradation  of  another  life. 
I   do   not   know   that   I   need   say   anything 
more.    I  have  discussed  these  five  principles 
with  young  men  a  great  many  times   here 
and  in  my  own  home,  at  Stanford  University, 
where  I  lectured  on  ethics  for  six  years,  and 
at  the  University  of  California  where  I  am 
lecturing  now  every  week  to  the  students.    I 
have  never  heard  a  young  man  who   called 
himself  a  decent  fellow  undertake  to  combat 
any  one  of  them.    Our  distinctions  must  be 
sound  and  real ;  our  attitude  must  be  positive, 
insisting  on  recreations  which  are  thoroughly 
enjoyable  not  merely  harmless;  a  just  and 
reasonable  sense  of  proportion  must  be  main- 
tained; each  pleasure  must  bring  more  than 
it    takes    away,  —  it    must    re-create ;    each 
pleasure  must  be  gained  without  the  loss  of 
money  or  modesty,  of  aspiration  or  fitness 
for  the  highest  things  to  others  who  are  in- 
volved with  us.    If  any  boy  or  man  will  take 

[97]' 


C^e  goimg  jttan'js  Mm$ 

these  five  principles,  paste  them  in  his  hat 
and  live  under  their  beneficent  sway,  I  have 
no  further  word  to  say  to  him  in  the  way  of 
rules  or  prohibitions.  He  will  steer  his  craft 
clear  of  the  rocks  in  this  matter  of  recrea- 
tion and  bring  it  at  last  into  the  desired 
haven. 

In  all  this  series  of  addresses  I  am  making 
my  main  plea  to  the  men  who  have  their 
heads  up,  intent  on  being  and  doing  some- 
thing worth  while.  If  you  are  bent  on  striv- 
ing for  an  honorable  success  at  the  bar,  or 
in  medicine,  as  an  engineer  or  in  business,  as 
a  teacher  or  preacher,  you  will  have  to  put 
intelligence  and  conscience  into  your  choice 
of  recreations.  Competition  is  keen  —  the 
world  will  not  take  "  any  old  thing  "  these 
days.  The  strain  is  severe  —  when  you  be- 
gin to  rise  toward  the  top  you  will  find  that 
you  have  not  an  ounce  of  nervous  force  to 
waste.  You  cannot  afford  now  to  squander 
either  money  or  time  in  view  of  the  de- 
mands which  will  be  made  upon  you  as  you 
advance.    You  will  need  it  all,  and  your  ex- 

[98] 


1$i$  iSecttationg 


penditures  must  re-create  impulses  for  effec- 
tive action. 

If  this  does  not  awaken  any  response  in 
your  heart,  if  you  are  satisfied  to  dawdle  and 
lag  behind,  then  it  does  not  matter  much 
with  what  particular  crowd  of  weaklings  you 
saunter.  You  can  sit  up  half  the  night  play- 
ing cards  and  inhaling  cigarette  smoke;  you 
can  frequent  theaters  which  help  to  pass  the 
evening  but  do  nothing  more ;  you  can  allow 
those  amusements  which  weaken  the  body 
rather  than  recruit  it,  dull  the  mind  rather 
than  sharpen  it,  cloud  the  moral  nature  in 
place  of  making  it  more  sympathetic  and 
alive,  to  have  their  way  with  you.  But  if 
you  mean  to  count  one  somewhere,  you  can- 
not afford  to  treat  the  question  of  recreation 
lightly. 

And  in  that  serious  purpose  to  do  and  to  be 
something  splendid,  joy  ought  to  have  a 
large  place.  The  first  word  in  the  Sermon 
on  the  Mount  is  "  happy  "  —  you  find  it 
translated  in  the  ordinary  version  "  blessed," 
but  that  is  only  a  deep  and  abiding  form  of 

[99] 


€^e  goimg  jjttan's?  affafrjs 

happiness.  A  long  face  and  a  clear  conscience 
may  go  together  — they  are  not  inseparable. 
Where  there  is  a  clear  conscience,  the  long 
face  indicates  something  wrong  with  the  liver 
or  with  the  general  scheme  of  things  in  that 
particular  life.  The  corners  of  the  mouth 
were  meant  to  be  turned  up  not  down.  Tears 
which  now  and  then  must  come  are  meant  to 
wash  the  eyes  out,  leaving  them  clear,  with 
a  more  sympathetic  insight  and  a  finer  radi- 
ance. It  is  not  only  consistent  with  a  serious 
purpose  but  imperative  for  its  full  realiza- 
tion that  wise  and  conscientious  provision  be 
made  for  recreation  of  the  life  forces  through 
honest  pleasure. 

I  would  make  a  strong  plea  for  those  forms 
of  recreation  which  take  us  into  the  open  air. 
The  young  man  who  has  a  sound  pair  of  legs 
under  him,  has  a  simple,  inexpensive,  satis- 
fying source  of  recreation  right  at  hand.  A 
tramp  through  the  hills,  along  some  river,  up 
the  mountain  side,  when  that  is  within  reach, 
is  always  in  order.  No  man  ever  walks  to 
his  grave,  —  he  rides  finally  in  a  hearse,  and 

[100] 


pg  ISecreattonjs 


he  may  be  riding  there  swiftly  in  an  automo- 
bile or  behind  a  fast  horse  or  by  some  other 
form  of  indulgence  which  he  cannot  afford. 
The  more  exciting  and  exhausting  forms  of 
pleasure  sought  after  by  city  men  often  leave 
them  with  a  distaste  for  the  simpler  modes 
of  recreation.  All  the  stars  in  the  sky,  all 
the  wild  flowers  in  the  field,  all  the  sweep  and 
slope  of  hill  and  mountain,  all  the  songs  of 
the  birds  and  the  appeal  of  rock  and  tree 
become  dull  to  them.  Alas !  that  they  lose  the 
capacity  for  those  finer  forms  of  pleasure. 
Distrust  all  those  recreations  which  breed  a 
distaste  for  healthy,  simple,  satisfying  things 
—  at  last  they  will  bite  like  a  serpent  and 
sting  like  an  adder. 

Football,  baseball,  tennis,  golf,  boating, 
bicycling,  tramping,  fishing,  how  good  they 
all  are !  And  they  are  within  the  reach  of 
such  vast  numbers  of  men !  It  is  one  of  the 
reproaches  of  our  industrial  system  that  they 
are  not  open  to  all.  They  leave  no  dark 
brown  taste  in  the  mouth.  They  rob  no  one 
of  money  or  modesty   or  aspiration.     They 

[101] 


vv 


of  ..    J 


C^e  goung  Jftan'g  affair 

bring  more  than  they  take  away ;  they  aid 
every  man  in  feeling  that  it  is  forever  fore- 
noon and  the  day  is  before  him. 
I  maintain  that  every  Sunday  ought  to  bring 
outdoor  opportunity  for  all  city  men  who 
spend  the  week  in  offices  and  stores.  If  a  man 
were  nothing  but  body,  he  might  spend  the 
whole  of  Sunday  in  that  way.  But  a  man  has 
a  mind  needing  the  higher  and  vaster  truths ; 
a  man  has  a  soul  needing  worship,  fellowship 
and  that  form  of  aspiration  and  service  which 
expresses  and  deepens  his  love  for  God  and 
man.  Every  life,  however,  ought  to  plan  for 
these  outdoor  periods  which  do  so  much  to 
recreate  the  sense  of  power. 
I  would  appeal  for  those  forms  of  recreation 
which  involve  brains  and  skill  rather  than 
mere  chance.  There  is  nothing  inherently 
wrong  in  the  fact  that  a  game  has  an  element 
of  chance  in  it,  —  the  old  game  of  Authors 
had  that.  The  element  of  chance  entering  in- 
to the  good  game  of  whist  which  can  yield 
so  much  honest  and  wholesome  pleasure  does 
not  in  any  wise  vitiate  it.    It  is  a  matter  of 

[  102] 


Pis  KccteatfottjS 


experience,  however,  that  games  of  chance 
are  most  readily  utilized  for  gambling. 
Against  the  whole  wretched  habit  of  gambling 

—  men's  sizes,  women's  sizes,  children's  sizes 

—  I  would  utter  the  strongest  protest  I  can 
frame,  for  it  is  the  shame  of  modern  life. 
Fashionable  whist  clubs  which  meet  and  play 
for  prizes  are  in  line  with  poker  and  faro  and 
the  race  track,  —  the  difference  is  one  of 
degree  not  of  principle.  What  can  a  mother, 
who  habitually  plays  bridge  for  so  much  sil- 
ver made  up  into  a  card  receiver,  calling  it  a 
"  prize,"  say,  when  her  son  begins  to  play 
poker  for  so  much  silver  coined  into  dollars, 
calling  them  "  stakes."  They  are  both  in 
the  same  boat;  the  boy  knows  it  and  the 
mother  knows  it ;  and  they  are  floating  down 
stream  so  far  as  unstained  integrity  goes,  the 
boy  nearer  the  rapids  perhaps  than  the 
mother  dreams. 

Think  of  a  man  being  so  reduced  in  brains, 
in  heart,  in  social  sympathy  that  he  cannot 
go  and  play  some  game  with  his  neighbor  for 
the  sheer  pleasure  of  it !   Think  of  him  as  not 

[  103] 


Ctye  poung,  jttan'g  affattg 

feeling  adequately  entertained  unless  he  can 
bag  something  of  value  to  carry  home  as  a 
prize.  It  is  a  wretched  fashion  for  societ}r 
to  establish !  It  helps  to  undermine  that  sense 
of  rugged  honesty  and  to  break  down  that 
finer  self  respect.  When  the  revelations  of 
dishonesty  among  the  pupils  of  a  High 
School  bring  consternation  to  a  whole  com- 
munity, the  women  who  have  been  playing 
bridge  for  money  at  so  much  a  point  and 
ordinary  whist  for  prizes,  ought  in  all  fair- 
ness to  say  —  "  We  helped !  We  are  guilty 
with  the  boys,  and  now  we  will  stop  and  try 
to  develop  brains  enough  to  amuse  ourselves 
without  any  suspicion  or  taint  of  gam- 
bling." 

The  finer  games,  chess  for  example,  which  is 
the  king  of  all  games  in  that  class,  make  the 
stronger  appeal.  You  cannot  play  chess  be- 
tween bites  of  gossip,  —  it  requires  attention. 
I  could  not  tell  you  how  many  delightful 
hours  on  shipboard  or  on  the  train  or  dur- 
ing the  leisure  of  some  vacation  I  have  en- 
joyed in  matching  my  skill  against  that  of 

[  104  ] 


$fg  Kecreatfong 


another  across  the  chess  board.  Every  young 
man  ought  to  learn  it  for  the  joy  of  know- 
ing a  game  which  takes  his  mind  completely 
off  of  everything  else  and  yields  an  inde- 
scribable pleasure. 

Billiards  ought  not  to  be  handed  over  to  the 
devil.  The  tables  are  often  found  in  saloons 
and  in  the  bars  of  the  large  hotels,  but  the 
game  is  both  enjoyable  and  wholesome.  It 
is  a  good  thing  that  many  families  are  pro- 
viding tables  for  their  sons  and  daughters 
who  play  under  right  conditions  with  their 
friends.  It  is  good  that  the  Young  Men's 
Christian  Association  in  many  eastern  cities 
is  putting  billiard  tables  in  the  Association 
buildings  to  help  reclaim  that  noble  game 
from  its  evil  associations.  So  all  games 
where  skill  and  brains  are  to  the  fore  and 
chance  is  slight  or  entirely  eliminated,  offer 
the  best  form  of  sport. 

I  would  appeal  for  those  forms  of  recreation 
which  aid  in  developing  a  fine  sense  of  chiv- 
alry. I  was  brought  up  to  think  that  it  was 
wrong  to  dance  —  I  believe  this  was  an  er- 

[105] 


Ctye  goung  jttan'g  £ffait# 

roneous  moral  judgment.  I  know  the  abuses 
of  it,  late  hours,  promiscuous  associations, 
drinking  on  the  part  of  men  at  the  adj  oining 
bars,  postures  which  are  not  conducive  to  re- 
finement. These  are  bad  and  only  bad,  but 
they  can  be  eliminated  and  dancing  used 
instead  of  abused.  "  There  is  a  time  to 
dance  "  the  wise  man  said  —  that  time  is  not 
two  o'clock  in  the  morning.  The  place  is  not 
where  the  conditions  surrounding  the  dance 
are  morally  undesirable.  But  for  right- 
minded  young  people  to  dance  together  with 
the  mothers  of  the  girls  and  boys  present 
as  chaperons,  at  reasonable  hours,  in  their 
own  homes,  or  at  other  places  as  unobjection- 
able, and  with  an  eye  to  avoiding  extrav- 
agance, offers  a  form  of  social  recreation 
which  has,  I  believe,  a  rightful  place  in  a 
Christian  civilization. 

Like  other  forms  of  recreation  it  ought  to 
bring  out  the  finer  qualities,  not  the  lower. 
The  man  who  engages  in  it  should  by  that 
very  fact  be  made  a  more  chivalrous,  con- 
siderate   and    serviceable    man.     When    the 

[106] 


1$i$  Eecreatfoug 


young  fellow  slips  out  between  dances  to 
drink  whiskey  or  other  intoxicants,  and  then 
comes  back  to  blow  the  fumes  of  it  in  the 
faces  of  the  young  women ;  when  he  allows 
himself  to  surrender  that  much  more  to  the 
animalism  which  whiskey  rapidly  induces, 
every  decent  woman  ought  to  turn  her  back 
on  him.  When  the  young  fellows  here  at 
a  certain  "  Assembly  "  insisted  on  going  out 
to  smoke  and  inhale  the  cigarette  fumes,  com- 
ing back  to  blow  their  offensive  breath  in  the 
faces  of  the  young  ladies,  they  needed  rebuke. 
When  the  chaperons  politely  remonstrated 
the  little  chaps  swelled  up  and  said — "  You 
cannot  have  your  parties  without  us  —  we 
will  do  as  we  please."  They  thought  they 
were  gentlemen  because  they  wore  swallow- 
tails, but  there  are  men  digging  in  the  streets 
at  two  dollars  a  day  who  have  tenfold  more 
courtesy  and  chivalry.  The  young  ladies 
should  have  said  "  You  cannot  have  your 
parties  without  us,  and  we  stand  for  that 
higher  level  of  good  breeding,  which  you 
are  not  disposed  to  show."    The  girls  who 

[107] 


C^e  goung  jftan'g  £ffaft# 

do  not  dance  with  such  young  fellows  will 
live  just  as  long  and  have  just  as  good  a 
time  and  reach  the  end  without  the  sense  of 
having  missed  anything  worth  while.  All  our 
social  recreation  ought  to  leave  us  with  a 
more  perfect  courtesy,  a  finer  chivalry  and 
a  purer  unselfishness. 

I  plead  for  those  forms  of  recreation  which 
send  a  man  back  to  his  work,  whatever  it  may 
be,  in  better  not  in  worse  shape  to  make  the 
quality  of  it  fine,  up  to  his  limit.  Spend 
your  evenings  in  such  a  way  that  next  day 
you  will  have  in  you  the  spirit  of  the  morn- 
ing! Shape  up  your  pleasures  in  such  a 
way  that  they  will  not  breed  distaste  for 
duty,  but  a  keener  zest  and  relish  in  the  dis- 
charge of  it.    You  know  the  German  saying : 

11  Die  Morgcnstunde 
Hat  Gold  im  Munde." 

The  morning  hours  have  gold  in  their 
mouths.  This  is  true  in  business,  in  the  pro- 
fession, in  the  work  of  education,  in  humane 
service.    But  it  is  only  true  where  the  even- 

[108] 


l$i$  Kecrcatfong 


ing  hours  were  spent  in  such  a  way  that  the 
morning  brings  with  it  the  spirit  of  the  morn- 
ing. 

I  have  no  manner  of  doubt  but  that  nine- 
tenths  of  our  American  young  men  would  do 
well  to  lop  off  a  full  half  of  the  money  and 
time  spent  on  recreation.  For  every  young 
man  in  a  twentieth  century  city  who  spends 
too  little  there  are  ten  who  spend  too  much. 
A  young  man  started  to  climb  Mount  Blanc, 
carrying  with  him  all  manner  of  things,  wine 
and  delicacies,  which  he  intended  to  enjoy 
when  he  reached  the  summit;  a  gay  hat,  and 
a  blanket  which  he  would  then  wrap  around 
him  to  keep  off  the  chill;  a  camera  with  an 
elaborate  arrangement  by  which  he  could 
photograph  himself  at  the  various  stages  of 
the  journey.  The  guide  smiled  and  noticed 
that  one  by  one  these  things  were  left  behind, 
as  the  path  grew  steep.  The  young  fellow 
laid  aside  his  wine  and  sweetmeats ;  then  the 
gay  hat  and  blanket  were  abandoned ;  at  last 
the  heavy  camera  was  also  left  behind,  and 
when  he  reached  the  top  he  stood  there  a 

[  109  ]. 


C^e  points  jttan'js  affair 


man  equipped  for  climbing,  with  the  impedi- 
menta left  behind.  If  you  intend  to  climb 
Mount  Blanc  or  even  one  of  the  lesser  peaks 
in  your  business,  your  profession,  your  trade, 
in  the  equipment  of  your  home,  in  the  enjoy- 
ment of  travel,  in  winning  the  esteem  and 
confidence  of  your  fellowmen,  you  will  need 
to  throw  off  a  lot  of  that  rubbish  you  are 
carrying  in  the  form  of  recreation. 
Whether  you  eat  or  drink,  work  or  play, 
weep  or  laugh,  do  all  things  to  the  glory  of 
God.  And  what  is  the  glory  of  God?  Wherein 
does  it  find  expression?  He  is  above  all  tilings 
a  Father,  and  His  glory  is  the  fulfilment  of 
His  beneficent  purpose  in  the  development  of 
the  lives  of  His  children  to  their  utmost. 
Nothing  lies  outside  of  that  purpose.  Noth- 
ing can  be  allowed  to  come  in  to  hinder  it. 
Carry  your  recreations  up  and  decide  upon 
them  in  the  light  of  that  sublime  truth! 
Compel  each  one  to  open  its  heart  and  declare 
to  you  its  real  intent  as  it  undertakes  to 
fasten  itself  upon  your  life ! 
And  if  you  insist  that  each  recreation  must 

[110] 


1$ i$  Kecttatfonss 


yield  more  than  it  takes  in  those  physical, 
mental,  social  and  moral  values  which  count 
in  the  work  of  life;  if  you  insist  that  each 
pleasure  shall  hold  itself  subordinate  to  your 
main  purpose ;  if  you  steadfastly  require  that 
no  pleasure  of  yours  shall  be  enjoyed  at 
the  cost  of  the  finer  values  in  those  other 
lives  involved,  then  indeed  you  will  eat  and 
drink,  work  and  play  to  the  glory  of  your 
Maker ! 


[Ill] 


m$  witz 


[113] 


CHAPTER    SIXTH 


W  Witt 


T  would  be  a  great  gain  if 
the  whole  matter  of  love 
and  marriage  might  be  lift- 
ed to  a  higher  level  in  the 
minds  of  young  and  old 
alike.  The  attachments  of 
youth  more  than  half  the  time  are  made  a 
matter  of  thoughtless  joke  or  of  weak  sen- 
timentality, and  yet  they  lead  oftentimes  to 
what  is  vital  beyond  any  other  one  interest 
you  can  name.  Young  people  are  making 
the  most  momentous  decisions  of  their  lives, 
as  these  bear  upon  happiness,  prosperity, 
character,  in  the  back  parlor  with  the  gas 
turned  halfway  down.  They  are  making 
these  decisions  in  a  sweet  swoon  of  sentiment 
—  they  had  better  have  their  eyes  open,  their 
wits  about  them,  and  view  the  whole  question 
in  broad  daylight.  You  would  not  think  of 
buying  a  house  and  lot,  or  a  farm  by  moon- 

11151 


C^e  gouttg  jEan'ss  affair 

light,  yet  all  the  real  estate  you  will  ever 
own  cuts  no  figure  at  all  in  its  bearing  upon 
life  as  compared  with  the  wisdom  or  the 
unwisdom  you  show  in  the  placing  of  your 
affections. 

Business  men  read  documents  over  before  they 
sign  them.  Young  people  had  better  read 
the  marriage  service  over  and  think  of  what 
the  several  clauses  in  it  imply.  It  is  not  wise 
to  postpone  its  serious  consideration  until 
the  last  moment  when  you  are  breathlessly 
asking  the  minister  where  you  are  to  come  in 
with  your  responses. 

"  Marriage  is  an  honorable  estate,  instituted 
of  God  and  commended  by  St.  Paul;  and 
therefore,  is  not  by  anyone  to  be  entered  into 
lightly  or  unadvisedly,  but  reverently,  dis- 
creetly, soberly  and  in  the  fear  of  God." 
You  will  find  that  all  the  larger  intentions 
of  life  fare  better  when  they  are  solidly 
grounded  in  reason,  reflection  and  religious 
purpose  as  well  as  clothed  with  lovely  sen- 
timent. You  are  to  take  each  other  the  ser- 
vice   says,    "  for    better  "  —  that's    easy  — 

[116] 


is  Witt 


"  for  worse,"  because  this  too  comes  often- 
times and  it  is  well  to  face  such  a  possibility 
in  advance !  "  For  richer  "  —  any  girl  is 
cheerily  ready  to  do  that ;  "  for  poorer  "  — 
she  may  be  called  upon  to  stand  beside  a  man 
through  years  of  financial  struggle  and  de- 
feat !  "  In  sickness  and  in  health  " —  you  are 
to  ask  yourself  as  a  man  if  you  have  it  in 
you  to  show  the  same  fine  fidelity  and  tender- 
ness through  possible  years  of  expensive  in- 
validism on  the  part  of  your  wife  as  when 
she  cheerily  walked  out  beside  you  for  a  long 
tramp  through  the  hills !  It  may  all  come  in 
the  day's  work  and  it  is  well  to  read  the 
document  over,  weighing  its  various  clauses 
before  you  sign  it. 

"  A  good  wife  is  from  the  Lord  " —  think  of 
her  in  that  high-minded  serious  way !  Accept 
her  as  the  choicest  gift  high  heaven  can 
bestow  upon  your  life.  Undertake  to  dis- 
cover in  her  fitness  for  you  and  yours  for  her, 
as  this  comes  to  be  revealed  under  the  power 
of  a  strong  and  pure  affection  that  divine 
purpose   which   shall   find   its    glorious   and 

[1171 


C^e  goung  Jttan'g  afEaitjs 

beautiful  fulfilment  through  the  unfolding 
years. 

Those  noble  unions  into  which  reason,  con- 
science and  religious  purpose  have  entered,  as 
well  as  the  joy  and  passion  of  youth,  have  a 
thousandfold  more  promise  in  them  than  all 
the  hasty,  ill-considered  attachments  which 
may  be  only  passing  fancies  at  their  best. 
You  ought  to  be  able  to  say  without  the  least 
suspicion  of  artificiality  touching  the  sense 
of  reserve  power,  of  unrevealed  capacity 
in  the  young  woman  who  is  to  share  your 

life: 

"  /  love  thee  then 
Not  for  thy  face,  which  might  indeed  provoke 
Invasion  of  strange  cities,  but 
Because  Infinity  upon  thee  broods 
And  thou  art  full  of  meaning  and  of  promise. 
Thou  sayest  what  all  the  seas  have  yearned  to 

say, 
Thou  art  what  all  the  winds  have  uttered  not, 
Thy  voice  is  like  sweet  music  from  another 
world." 

You  ought  not  to  fall  in  love  —  rise  to  it ! 
Let  your  mutual  response,  each  to  the  other's 

[118] 


W$  &ttt 


charm,  mean  the  elevation  of  the  whole  tone, 
purpose  and  spirit  of  your  lives  under  the 
power  of  a  noble  affection.  Marriage  is  not 
a  failure,  although  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
people  are  failing  in  their  attempt  at  it.  It 
is  the  Matterhorn  in  the  whole  range  of 
earthly  privilege.  Only  the  elect  who  can 
show  those  qualities  of  body,  brain  and  soul 
necessary  for  the  climb  are  privileged  to 
reach  the  top.  However  high  you  may  finally 
climb  make  up  your  mind  to  use  your  best 
strength  not  to  add  another  to  the  list  of 
marital  failures.  Carry  your  married  joy  far 
up  the  steep  ascent! 

I  suppose  I  have  attended  more  weddings 
than  any  other  person  here,  unless  there  hap- 
pens to  be  present  some  older  clergyman 
whose  period  of  service  is  still  longer.  I  sup- 
pose the  minister  of  a  large  parish  like  this 
comes  to  know  the  inside  workings  of  more 
homes  than  any  other  man  in  the  community 
unless  it  be  the  family  physician  with  a  large 
practice.  I  have  seen  a  great  many  girls 
enter  gaily  into  unions  when  it  would  have 

[119] 


€I?e  ^oung  jttan'g  affair 

been  for  their  happiness  rather  to  have  had 
their  hands  chopped  off,  or  their  eyes  put 
out  instead.  A  girl  would  think  a  long  time 
before  she  would  consent  to  such  a  mutila- 
tion as  that,  and  yet  the  mutilation  of  mind 
and  soul  which  comes  by  marrying  a  man  of 
unworthy  character  goes  far  beyond  it.  I 
have  seen  young  fellows  in  a  spirit  of  bravado 
or  recklessness  marry  and  then  for  years  live 
so  that  their  experiences  were  like  walking 
through  hell  barefoot,  bringing  up  at  last 
in  the  melancholy  debris  of  the  divorce  court. 
Because  I  see  these  things  and  am  called  upon 
to  suffer  with  those  who  suffer,  you  will 
understand  why  I  speak  of  this  whole  matter 
with  a  certain  noble  seriousness. 
Let  me  offer  then  out  of  a  wide  experience 
some  very  practical  suggestions.  First  of 
all,  earn  your  right  to  be  married!  Earn  it 
physically!  You  have  no  right  to  bring  the 
taint  of  vicious  disease  or  the  scars  of  vile 
debauchery  to  wed  on  equal  terms  with  purity 
and  honor.  You  will  feel  like  a  whelp  if  you 
do — whether  she  knows  or  the  world  knows 

[  120] 


ty»  Witt 


or  not,  you  will  know.  When  you  hear  some 
plausible  scoundrelly  argument  put  forward 
for  impurity  down  here  at  the  High  School 
or  on  the  boat,  or  in  some  hour  of  reckless 
dissipation,  think  how  you  would  feel  if  you 
heard  such  a  sentiment  from  the  lips  of  your 
sister  or  your  sweetheart.  Scorn  it  all,  as 
you  would  have  her  scorn  it ! 
Earn  your  right  to  be  married  morally. 
Blessed  be  God  for  the  faith  and  hope  and 
love  of  good  women,  but  you  have  no  right 
to  impose  upon  that  gracious  disposition.  If 
you  find  yourself  in  the  grip  of  some  appe- 
tite, liquor,  gambling  or  what  not,  have  the 
common  decency  to  fight  your  own  battle 
through  and  win  it  first,  that  you  may  offer 
her  a  man  and  not  a  victim. 
[Earn  your  right  to  be  married  financially. 
A  girl  who  is  worth  marrying  is  not  a  fool. 
She  does  not  expect  you  to  be  as  prosperous 
at  the  beginning  of  your  life  as  her  father 
is  at  the  close  of  his.  She  is  willing,  if  there 
is  anything  of  the  woman  in  her,  to  share  in 
the  struggle  and  enjoy  the  success  which  will 

[121] 


C^e  goung  jftan's  affair 

come  by-and-by,  all  the  more  because  she 
helped  bring  it  about. 

There  are  girls  who  lack  this  readiness  — 
"  charlotte  russe  girls,"  someone  called  them, 
"  all  whipped  cream  and  little  sponge  cakes 
and  high-priced  flavoring  extracts,  but  nei- 
ther satisfying  nor  nourishing."  The  girl  of 
sense  is  not  like  that  —  she  does  not  want  to 
begin  her  housekeeping  on  the  same  scale  as 
that  upon  which  her  mother  leaves  off.  Take 
for  granted  her  readiness  to  make  sacrifices 
with  you  joyously,  because  of  her  love  for 
you.  But  even  so  know  that  it  is  an  unmanly 
thing  to  take  a  girl  out  of  her  father's  home 
and  away  from  the  opportunity  of  making 
any  other  union  unless  you  have  a  reasonable 
prospect  of  being  able  to  provide  for  her 
comfort. 

There  are  a  lot  of  old  saws  which  ought  to 
be  retired.  "  Two  people  can  live  on  less  than 
one  "  —  it  cannot  be  done.  You  might  as 
well  say  that  two  and  two  make  five.  You 
will  find  that  the  multiplication  table  is  still 
in  force  however  much  you  and  your  bride 

[  122  ] 


$f*  Witt 


may  be  in  love  with  each  other.  A  man's  hat 
costs  three  dollars  or  three  dollars  and  a  half 
—  even  a  Dunlap  or  a  Stetson  only  five.  Cast 
your  eye  on  one  of  those  lovely  creations 
which  obstruct  the  view  and  try  to  think 
what  a  sealed  bid  on  such  a  structure  as  that 
would  probably  reveal.  Any  wife  doubles  a 
man's  expenses,  and  if  she  is  a  good  wife  she 
more  than  doubles  his  happiness  —  so  it  all 
comes  out  right  in  the  trial  balance. 
It  is  the  part  of  good  sense  to  think  of  all 
this  even  before  you  find  yourself  engaged. 
It  is  well  to  think  of  it  when  you  are  tempted 
to  spend  all  your  spare  cash  on  unnecessary 
indulgences.  A  substantial  account  in  the 
savings  bank  or  a  life  insurance  policy  on 
which  you  have  been  paying  for  a  number 
of  years  will  be  a  very  pleasant  thought  to 
you  when  you  are  on  your  way  to  the  jewel- 
er's  to  buy  the  wedding  ring.  Earn  your 
right  to  be  married  physically,  morally, 
financially. 

In  the  second  place,  be  married,  unless  there 
is  some  hard  fact  standing  in  the  way  which 

[  123] 


C^e  gowng  plan's!  affair 

makes  it  impossible.  You  cannot  do  anything 
better  for  the  human  race,  taking  it  by  and 
large,  than  to  build  one  more  normal  and 
happy  home  in  the  world.  What  other  insti- 
tution is  there  for  which  you  can  become 
individually  responsible,  that  compares  with 
it?  Out  of  such  homes,  as  from  no  other 
source,  issue  those  influences  and  activities 
which  inspire  industry  with  finer  principles 
and  invest  social  life  with  a  purer  spirit, 
ennoble  the  state  and  strengthen  the  church. 
What  better  thing  anywhere  on  God's  green 
earth  is  there  than  such  a  home?  Your  pleas- 
ure, your  convenience,  your  career  will  not 
weigh  for  a  moment  over  against  such  an 
asset  to  society  as  that  real  home  which  you 
might  go  and  build. 

The  men  who  refuse  to  marry,  making  excep- 
tions here  and  there  for  those  individuals 
who  because  of  ill-health  or  peculiar  family 
circumstances  or  other  valid  reasons,  find  it 
impossible,  are  selfish  men.  Each  one  might 
be  making  some  good  woman  happy,  but  he 
prefers  to  spend  his  all  on  himself.    They  de- 

[124] 


$fe  Witt 


serve  the  feeling  which  all  rightly  constituted 
men  and  women  have  for  them.  We  may  joke 
about  them  as  "jolly  old  bachelors,"  but 
the  world  withholds  from  them  its  genuine 
regard.  It  is  an  abnormal,  cowardly  way 
to  live  for  the  man  who  chooses  it  voluntarily, 
and  unless  there  is  some  insuperable  obstacle 
which  makes  marriage  impossible,  you  should 
not  be  willing  to  march  under  that  sorry 
flag. 

In  the  third  place,  marry  the  right  woman. 
While  I  urge  every  young  man  to  be  married 
and  have  a  home,  I  do  not  mean  that  he 
should  leap  in  at  the  slightest  provocation. 
As  Senator  Beveridge  puts  it,  "  The  fact 
that  it  is  advantageous  for  a  man  to  learn  to 
swim  does  not  mean  that  he  should  jump  into 
the  first  stream  he  comes  to  with  all  his 
clothes  on."  It  is  not  well  to  propose  to  a 
girl  "  before  you  have  had  time  to  notice 
whether  her  front  hair  and  back  hair  match." 
I  use  the  expression  symbolically  as  well  as 
literally,  for  you  may  find  that  she  has  two 
kinds  of  adornment  in  her  manners,  her  mind 

[125] 


Ctye  goung  jttau'g  &ffafrj8 

and  her  disposition.  It  is  well  to  know 
whether  the  young  lady  who  receives  you  in 
the  evening  so  delightfully  when  you  call  is 
the  same  young  lady  who  responds  next  morn- 
ing to  her  mother's  summons  to  assist  in  pre- 
paring the  family  breakfast.  It  is  well  to  take 
time  to  consider  all  these  things  in  advance 
for  when  you  are  once  married  you  will  be 
married  a  good  while. 

You  think  it  is  wonderful  that  some  girl  is 
interested  in  you  because  you  have  shown  an 
interest  in  her ;  that  when  you  are  with  her 
she  makes  you  feel  that  you  are  almost  a 
god.  Girls  have  been  doing  that  ever  since 
Eve  walked  as  a  bride  among  the  trees  of  the 
Garden.  You  cannot  throw  a  stone  in  a 
crowded  city  without  hitting  twenty  girls 
who  would  do  the  same  thing  if  you  should 
show  an  interest  in  any  one  of  them.  And  it 
is  just  as  well  to  beware  of  the  girl  who  is 
too  ready  with  her  response  —  if  she  is  a 
girl  worth  having  she  wants  to  look  you  over 
to  see  if  your  front  hair  matches  your  back 
hair. 

[126] 


$$  miz 


Beware  of  the  girl  who  is  perfectly  willing  to 
have  you  spend  four  or  five  evenings  a  week 
in  her  company.  In  the  days  when  knight- 
hood was  in  flower,  it  was  said  that  no  man's 
armor  was  ever  fitted  to  him  aright  until  the 
hand  of  affection  had  buckled  it  on.  And 
when  the  woman  who  loved  a  brave  man  sent 
him  forth  encased  in  steel,  her  mark  of  affec- 
tion upon  his  cheek,  she  expected  him  to  do 
and  to  dare,  to  take  a  man's  full  part  in  the 
life  of  the  world.  A  woman  who  has  not 
brains  enough  to  have  a  pride  in  and  a  con- 
cern for  a  man's  achievements  in  the  field  of 
serious  manly  effort,  who  prefers  to  have  him 
always  dancing  attendance  upon  her  pleas- 
ure, is  of  no  help  to  a  man  possessed  of 
genuine  aspiration. 

Marry  the  right  girl  —  hasty,  foolish,  ill- 
advised  marriages  are  responsible  for  nine- 
tenths  of  the  melancholy  wreckage  in  the 
divorce  courts.  There  is  a  law  pending  be- 
fore our  Legislature  at  this  time  to  provide 
for  more  publicity  and  more  deliberation  in 
the  act  of  marriage.     As  it  is  now  a  young 

[127] 


€^e  gouug  0Lan'$  Mait$ 


fellow  can  get  a  marriage  license  in  about 
fifteen  minutes  whenever  the  fit  is  on  him,  and 
at  once  stand  up  before  a  minister  for  four 
minutes  more,  and  then  put  in  a  good  many 
years  cursing  himself  for  being  a  fool,  or 
causing  some  woman  to  curse  the  day  she  first 
saw  him.  Take  your  time,  take  your  time, 
even  though  your  emotions  are  fairly  sweep- 
ing you  off  your  feet !  It  will  be  better  to  sit 
down  now  and  consider  the  whole  matter  care- 
fully in  advance.  Emotions  and  all,  those 
unions  which  are  based  on  acquaintance, 
knowledge,  ascertained  congeniality  and  fit- 
ness are  the  ones  which  best  stand  the  wear 
and  tear  and  finally  yield  the  most. 
I  know  exactly  how  you  feel  when  you  meet 
one  of  those  girls  who  is  "  just  a  dream  " — I 
have  felt  that  way  myself.  She  has  a  far- 
away look  in  her  eyes ;  she  quotes  Shelley  and 
Browning;  she  has  a  plaintive,  vox  humcina 
stop  in  her  voice,  which  she  pulls  out  when 
she  speaks  of  "  kismet  "  and  fate,  or  hints  at 
tragedies  in  her  own  emotional  history.  She 
is  a  dream  of  a  girl,  but  dreams  are  poor 

[  128  ] 


W  &$* 


things  to  build  on — they  are  liable  to  end  in 
nightmares.  Something  more  substantial  and 
ascertainable  would  be  preferable,  and  you 
are  wise  if  you  take  time  to  give  the  woman 
of  your  choice  the  fullest  consideration. 
Here  are  some  principles  of  selection  which 
you  will  find  useful.  Before  marriage  the 
face,  the  figure,  the  manner  seem  to  count  for 
everything.  They  have  their  value  all  the  way 
along,  but  after  marriage  mind,  heart,  soul, 
are  rated  higher,  and  you  will  think  so  too 
before  you  have  celebrated  your  first  wedding 
anniversary.  Marry  a  woman  first  of  all  of 
sterling  moral  character — a  woman  who  does 
not  lie,  nor  steal,  nor  act  meanly;  a  woman 
capable  of  self-restraint  and  self-sacrifice — 
she  will  need  these  qualities  if  she  marries  you 
or  me  or  any  man ;  a  woman  kindly  and  gen- 
erous in  her  prevailing  moods  and  temper; 
a  woman  with  a  great  power  of  sympathy, 
which  is  the  feminine  grace  that  well-nigh 
outweighs  all  the  rest.  Seek  for  these  fine 
qualities  as  the  basis  of  character,  and  then 
the  more  beauty  of  person  and  social  win- 

[129] 


Clje  goung  jttan'js  affair 

someness  the  better !  The  woman  within  the 
woman  is  the  one  you  will  live  with;  she  is 
the  one  to  whom  you  will  be  compelled  to  go 
for  the  strength  and  joy  that  married  life 
should  bring. 

I  would  not  speak  slightingly  of  outward 
attractions — "  Beauty  is  only  skin  deep," 
Lorimer  said,  "  but  that's  deep  enough  for  all 
practical  purposes."  The  woman  you  can 
look  at  with  some  degree  of  comfort  is  to  be 
preferred  to  the  opposite  type,  other  things 
being  equal.  But  other  considerations  weigh ; 
no  matter  how  pretty  she  is,  you  must  ask: 
Has  she  any  mind?  Does  she  read  anything 
besides  the  novels  of  the  day?  Can  she  think, 
and  when  she  thinks  does  she  produce  any- 
thing? Has  she  any  serious  purpose  in  life? 
Has  she  any  ideals,  fine  enough,  high  enough, 
inclusive  enough,  to  hang  up  in  your  sky  and 
hers;  and  does  she  take  them  seriously?  Has 
she  the  power  of  making  friends  among 
women  as  well  as  men,  for  the  woman  who 
shines  only  when  with  men  and  not  with  her 
own  sex  belongs  in  the  same  sorry  category 

[  130] 


W$  £We 


with  "  The  Ladies'  Man."  Does  she  pray? 
She  will  need  that  fine  form  of  aid  for  herself 
and  for  you,  in  your  times  of  temptation, 
defeat,  sorrow,  and  for  those  children  which 
may  be  yours.  These  habits  of  mind  and  soul 
are  the  ones  which  ought  to  tip  the  scales  of 
your  choice !  Marry  the  right  woman  ! 
And  finally  when  you  are  married,  stay  mar- 
ried. In  California  last  year  in  a  certain 
county  there  was  one  divorce  to  every  ten 
marriages,  and  in  another  county  one  divorce 
to  every  four  marriages.  The  gruesome  rec- 
ords of  the  divorce  courts  and  the  array  of 
irregular  attachments  and  scandals  which 
lead  up  to  them,  as  revealed  by  the  daily 
press,  are  appalling. 

We  might  as  well  stand  up  man-fashion  and 
say  that  four-fifths  of  it  all  is  our  fault. 
There  are  faults  on  the  other  side.  There  are 
women  I  would  not  live  with  even  though  I 
had  been  so  unfortunate  as  to  have  married 
one  of  them.  I  would  not  live  with  an  im- 
moral woman ;  I  would  not  live  with  a  woman 
who  was  an  habitual  drunkard.    But  short  of 

[131] 


€^e  points  Jftan'js  affair 

some  form  of  outrageous  wrongdoing  I  am 
just  old-fashioned  enough  to  believe  that 
nothing  should  cause  a  man  to  leave  the  wife 
whom  he  has  sworn  to  protect  or  to  take  such 
an  attitude  as  compels  her  to  leave  him,  so 
long  as  they  both  shall  live. 
The  man  is  the  aggressor.  He  seeks  the  girl 
out, — she  does  not  go  to  him  and  suggest 
marriage.  He  takes  her  out  of  her  father's 
home,  away  from  the  other  men  who  might 
have  married  her.  He  stands  up  before  God 
and  man  and  in  the  most  solemn  way  prom- 
ises to  do  everything  that  a  man  can  do,  to 
love,  honor  and  protect  her  so  long  as  they 
both  shall  live.  You  may  hear  some  young 
fellow  whine  about  his  affairs,  after  he  has 
been  married  a  few  years  and  plead  as  an  ex- 
cuse for  his  growing  interest  in  some  affinity 
— "  I  was  not  happy."  Suppose  he  was  not ! 
He  may  not  be  happy  when  he  goes  down  to 
pay  his  taxes,  or  when  he  finds  he  has  signed 
some  contract  which  turns  out  to  be  for  his 
loss,  or  when  he  must  fulfil  any  one  of  a  hun- 
dred hard  duties  which  belong  to  manly  in- 

[  132  ] 


m$  E?ffe 


tegrity !  It  is  a  question  of  honor  and  of 
keeping  one's  word,  not  of  feeling  tickled 
every  moment  of  the  time !  If  the  woman 
wants  to  live  with  him  and  is  not  a  bad 
woman,  he  is  pledged  to  strive  with  all  his 
might  to  live  with  her  and  to  do  his  best  to 
make  her  happy. 

All  this  wretched  talk  about  "  affinities  "  in 
justification  of  marital  infidelity,  all  these 
problem  plays  and  decadent  stories  dealing 
with  those  abnormal  attachments  which  lead 
to  immorality,  what  a  mess  of  rotten  apples 
it  all  makes  !  We  need  the  rigor  and  the  vigor 
of  some  northwest  wind  to  clear  the  air ! 
This  very  week  this  case  came  into  my  own 
study.  A  man  married  a  lovely  girl  here  three 
years  ago.  There  are  now  two  little  children. 
The  woman  trusted  him  and  loved  him  and 
thought  he  was  one  of  the  best  of  men. 
Within  the  last  six  months  he  has  been  neg- 
lecting her, — he  "  was  not  happy,"  he  said ; 
he  had  found  an  "  affinity  "  elsewhere.  Now 
he  has  left  her  altogether,  and  she  must 
return  to  her  father's  house  to  get  bread  for 

[  133] 


"^k. 

^"-^J 


C^e  goung  jttan'g  &Mv$ 

herself  and  her  children.  I  suppose  we  did 
right  in  abolishing  the  old  whipping  post, 
where  men  for  certain  offenses  were  tied  up 
and  given  forty  lashes  across  their  bare 
backs,  but  with  such  a  man  as  that  to  deal 
with  I  wish  we  had  some  proper  modern  de- 
vice to  show  the  resentment  of  decent  society 
against  such  a  crime. 

A  well-appointed  marriage  is  an  inspiration 
and  a  joy  forever,  but  no  true  man  will  allow 
himself  to  go  down  in  defeat  morally,  finan- 
cially or  otherwise  because  he  made  a  mis- 
taken choice.  His  own  manhood,  as  well  as 
the  stability  of  those  domestic  relations  which 
lie  at  the  basis  of  all  moral  advance  in  society 
is  at  stake.  Not  in  more  stringent  divorce 
laws ;  not  in  the  rivetting  of  stronger  rules 
upon  human  conduct,  but  in  the  development 
of  a  finer  chivalry  on  the  part  of  men  toward 
women,  and  of  a  truer  sympathy  on  the  part 
of  women  toward  men  are  we  to  find  our 
domestic  salvation. 

Turn  to  the  Lord  Christ!   How  He  guarded 
and  protected  and  upheld  the  woman!    She 

[  134] 


f  t»  Wilt 


might  be  an  erring  woman ;  she  might  be  a 
woman  lacking  in  judgment;  she  might  be  a 
woman  weak  and  frail  in  her  whole  make-up, 
— no  matter,  the  Son  of  Man,  the  typical 
Man  would  shield  and  sustain  her  by  His 
finer  strength!  In  a  fuller  measure  of  that 
Christian  chivalry  which  bears  all  things, 
hopes  all  things,  endures  all  things,  that  it 
may  make  full  proof  of  its  manly  devotion, 
we  shall  build  around  the  home  its  best  de- 
fense. 


[135] 


te  €t)mti) 


i  i37  j 


CHAPTER    SEVENTH 


PiS  €t)UVtt) 


OU  have  allowed  me  to  speak 
to  you  on  these  evenings  we 
have  been  spending  to- 
gether touching  the  vari- 
ous aspects  of  the  young 
man's  life.  We  have  been 
thinking  of  his  main  purpose  and  of  his 
friends,  of  his  books  and  of  his  recreations, 
of  the  money  he  controls  and  of  the  home  he 
hopes  to  build !  We  come  now  to  that  which, 
in  a  way,  should  underlie  all  the  rest,  lifting 
them  into  a  higher  meaning  and  clothing 
them  with  a  finer  strength.  The  young  man 
needs  religion,  just  as  surely  as  he  needs 
money  and  friends,  books  and  a  home — and 
I  know  of  no  better  place  to  gain  it  and 
maintain  it  than  in  some  branch  of  the  Church 
of  Jesus  Christ. 

Just   ahead   of  this   splendid  young   fellow, 
full-blooded  and  resolute,  stands  a  tempta- 

[139] 


C^e  ^oung  jttan'g  affair 

tion  awaiting  him, — it  will  test  him  as  the 
storm  tests  a  ship.  Will  he  conquer  it  or  will 
it  have  its  way  with  him? 
Just  ahead  of  him  stands  a  hard  duty,  a 
chance  to  bear  his  part  man-fashion  in  the 
everlasting  battle  which  is  on  between  the 
higher  and  the  lower!  Will  he  shirk  or  will 
he  shoulder  arms  and  go  to  the  front,  ready 
to  take  his  own  full  share  in  the  struggle  ? 
Just  ahead  of  him  stands  one  of  those  awful 
sorrows,  which  come  oftentimes  to  old  and 
young  alike!  Will  he  meet  it  and  not  flinch, 
holding  his  course  as  a  true  man  and  impart- 
ing strength  to  those  around  him,  or  will  he 
prove  a  weakling? 

These  are  questions  which  must  be  answered, 
yes  or  no,  not  with  the  lips,  but  by  the  life. 
And  these  are  questions  to  which  the  answers 
are  worked  out  not  in  the  chemistry  class  or 
in  the  engineering  building  where  you  study, 
not  in  the  office  or  the  store  where  you  work, 
not  in  the  club  house  or  other  resort  where 
you  play,  so  much  as  in  that  place  where 
above  all  else  men  are  brought  face  to  face 

[  140] 


i^tSf  Cl)mx^ 


with  God,  and  taught  to  feel  a  sense  of  fel- 
lowship with  Him,  who  is  the  ultimate  source 
of  moral  strength. 

"  On  this  rock  I  will  build  my  church."  The 
words  fell  from  the  lips  of  One  who  was  still 
young,  only  thirty-two.  They  indicate  the 
purpose  which  was  fundamental  to  His  life 
work.  He  ^  wrote  no  books.  He  painted  no 
pictures.  He  amassed  no  wealth.  He  gath- 
ered together  some  men  and  women  who  be- 
lieved in  Him  and  shared  His  spirit,  and 
then  He  built  them  into  a  church.  It  was  the 
main  thing  He  came  to  do — He  committed 
the  truths  He  had  taught  and  the  whole 
movement  He  had  started  into  the  keeping 
of  that  little  church.  It  is  well  for  us  to 
recall  the  divine  initiative  in  the  organization 
of  the  church  and  the  high  estimate  placed 
upon  it  by  One  who  knew  and  spake  to  our 
needs  as  never  man  spake. 
"  On  this  rock  I  will  build  " — He  spoke  these 
words  to  a  group  of  young  men  with  their 
lives  ahead  of  them.  When  one  of  the  group 
spoke  out  his  own  faith,  love  and  loyalty  to 

[141]         , 


C^e  goiws  jttau'js  affair 

the  Master,  Christ  said :  "  Blessed  art  thou — 
on  this  I  will  build !  "  He  saw  around  Him 
many  who  felt  an  admiration  for  what  He  was 
doing.  They  said,  "  He  is  equal  to  John  the 
Baptist,  or  Elijah,  or  Jeremiah,  or  any  one 
of  the  prophets."  All  this  had  a  certain  value 
but  not  the  highest.  Close  beside  Him  were 
a  few  young  men  who  trusted  Him  unreserv- 
edly and  openly  confessed  Him  as  the  Lord 
and  Savior  of  men.  They  were  out  and  out 
about  it,  and  they  became  the  ground  of  His 
hope.  "  On  this  rock  I  will  build,"  He  said, 
"  and  the  forces  of  evil  shall  not  prevail 
against  it." 

He  entrusted  to  that  group  of  young  men, 
who  were  clear-cut  in  their  loyalty  to  Him, 
a  tremendous  responsibility  and  a  splendid 
privilege  along  the  line  of  moral  usefulness. 
"  I  will  give  you  the  keys,"  He  said — "  I  will 
make  you  competent  to  open  the  door  for 
your  fellow-men  into  a  larger  and  nobler  way 
of  life."  It  is  nothing  official  or  perfunctory 
which  Christ  is  describing  here.  The  petty 
ecclesiasticism  which  undertakes  to  wrap  all 

[  142  ] 


$f0  CljUtCl) 


these  fine  realities  up  in  a  surplice  misses  the 
meaning  of  the  whole  passage.  He  was  pic- 
turing that  strong  and  vital  service,  which 
young  men  anywhere,  when  once  they  become 
allied  with  Him,  could  render  their  associates. 
Your  influence  for  good  or  for  evil  as  you 
go  out  brim  full  of  that  unwearying  energy 
which  belongs  to  youth,  can  become  so  potent 
that  what  you  loose  on  earth  will  be  loosed 
in  heaven,  and  what  you  bind  on  earth  will  be 
bound  in  heaven  !  You  can  by  your  own  moral 
influence  help  to  fasten  men  in  their  sins  or 
help  to  free  them,  in  a  way  that  will  send  its 
results  on  into  the  unseen  world. 
What  a  glorious  thing  to  stand  up  young, 
strong,  clean,  and  have  the  Master  of  men 
speak  to  you  like  that !  What  a  splendid 
privilege  to  have  the  One  who  has  set  all  the 
leading  nations  of  the  world  dating  their  his- 
tory, their  contracts,  their  correspondence 
from  the  date  of  His  birth,  1909  years  ago, 
address  you  in  those  terms !  How  magnifi- 
cent to  be  one  of  the  group  to  whom  He  com- 
mits such  a  trust !    "  On  this  I  will  build !  " 

[  143] 


C^e  $otmg  ittan'ss  affaftg 

"  I  will  give  you  the  keys  " — that  we  may 
throw  the  doors  open  wide  for  our  fellows 
into  the  joy  and  splendor  of  life.  We  may  go 
forth  when  once  the  energy  of  His  purpose 
has  become  potent  in  our  hearts,  binding  and 
loosing  in  the  moral  influence  we  can  exert. 
And  that  company  of  people,  young  and  old, 
men  and  women,  in  this  land  and  in  all  lands, 
we  call  the  Church  of  Christ  Jesus. 
What  a  noble  privilege  for  a  young  man  to 
build  a  portion  of  his  life  into  an  institution 
like  that !  Take  for  example  this  church 
which  we  all  know — there  are  any  number  of 
other  churches  in  the  land  which  would  serve 
equally  well  to  illustrate  my  point,  but  here 
the  facts  are  right  at  hand.  It  has  the  ear 
of  the  community, — what  it  says  counts.  It 
is  known  far  and  wide  for  its  noble  music — 
people  come  for  miles  to  listen  and  go  away 
blessed.  It  has  standing  all  over  this  land  as 
a  center  of  intelligent,  systematic  religious 
instruction,  through  its  graded  Sunday 
School  and  its  employment  of  a  trained  man 
to  give  his  whole  time  to  superintending  that 

[  144] 


$te  c^utcl) 


work.  It  is  a  beehive  from  which  workers  go 
out  into  the  charitable  and  philanthropic 
work  of  the  community, — you  cannot  name 
a  charity  in  this  city,  except  those  directly 
under  the  care  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church, 
where  the  members  of  this  congregation  are 
not  serving.  It  is  a  center  of  joyous  fellow- 
ship— in  all  the  fifty  years  of  its  history  it 
has  never  had  a  quarrel  and  the  friendships 
formed  here  among  its  members  are  among 
the  sweetest  experiences  of  their  lives.  It  has 
a  political  influence,  and  when  the  five  hun- 
dred men  who  are  members  of  this  congrega- 
tion set  their  influence  strongly  in  support 
of  some  measure  of  civic  righteousness  or  bet- 
terment, the  city  feels  it.  It  is  a  powerful 
institution,  as  everyone  knows,  set  down  here 
at  the  center  of  this  community  of  more  than 
a  quarter  of  a  million  of  people. 
And  how  did  it  all  come  about?  This  church 
did  not  drop  down  out  of  the  skies  in  the 
night.  Some  wholesale  house  in  the  East  did 
not  load  it  on  a  freight  train  and  ship  it  out 
here.    It  came  because  a  company  of  young 

[  145  ] 


Ctye  gowng  jHan'js  affairs 

men  and  young  women,  older  men  and  older 
women  have  for  fifty  years  been  putting  in 
their  time  and  their  strength,  their  money 
and  their  service,  their  devotion  and  their 
love  to  make  the  First  Congregational  Church 
of  Oakland  one  of  the  factors  which  would 
count  for  the  higher  life  of  the  city,  the  state 
and  the  nation. 

Indeed,  its  influence  has  gone  out  into  all  the 
earth,  its  money  and  its  members  to  the  ends 
of  the  world.  We  have  at  this  hour  those  who 
were  once  and  those  who  are  now  upon  its  roll 
of  membership,  working  in  Alaska,  in  Japan, 
in  China,  in  India  and  in  all  the  islands  of  the 
Sea,  carrying  on  the  everlasting  battle  be- 
tween the  higher  and  the  lower,  helping  to 
put  the  crown  of  victory  where  it  belongs. 
How  glorious  to  be  one  of  that  group  around 
the  Master  of  men,  the  Great  Head  of  the 
Church,  and  to  build  one's  life  into  an  institu- 
tion whose  influence  is  so  wholesome  and  far- 
reaching  ! 

I  have  knocked  around  a  good  deal  in  the 
forty -five  years  I  have  been  privileged  to  live. 

[146] 


$i$  County 


I  have  attended  various  institutions  of  learn- 
ing and  I  have  a  drawer  full  of  diplomas  at 
home.    I  have  received  some  expressions   of 
the  esteem  and  confidence  of  my  fellowmen, 
which  are  inexpressibly  precious  to  me.     But 
the  highest  honor   I  have  ever   received  or 
ever   can    receive  is   the   privilege   of   being 
known    as    a    Christian.      The   name   of   my 
Master  Christ — it  is  the  name  above  every 
name,  and  I  am  permitted  to  wear  it  in  being 
known  as  a  "  Christian."     When  some  man 
stands  beside  the  open  casket  to  speak  a  few 
words    of    appreciation    for    me    as    I    have 
spoken  them  for  so  many  hundreds  of  peo- 
ple in  my  ministry,  if  that  man  can  say  "  He 
was  a  Christian,"  I  ask  nothing  better. 
And  being  a  Christian,  a  servant  and  follower 
of  Jesus  Christ,  I  want  the  fact  to  be  known, 
I  want  to  be  enrolled  somewhere  as  a  member 
of  some  branch  of  the  church  of  Christ.    I 
would  be  ashamed  to  slink  off  in  the  dark  and 
try  to  be  a  Christian  all  by  myself,  never 
confessing  my  allegiance  openly  by  member- 
ship in  the  church  He  came  to  build. 

[147] 


C^e  goung  jEan'ss  affair 


How  strange  and  abnormal  such  an  attitude 
would  be!  I  have  listened  reverently  to  the 
service  of  the  Mass  in  Catholic  St.  Peters  at 
Rome,  I  have  enjoyed  the  superb  music  of 
the  men's  chorus  in  the  Cathedral  of  the  As- 
sumption in  the  Kremlin  at  Moscow,  and  I 
have  heard  a  choir  of  Indian  boys  sing  Greg- 
orian chants  in  a  Russian  church  on  the  west 
coast  of  Alaska!  I  have  witnessed  the  mid- 
night service  on  Good  Friday  at  the  Cathe- 
dral of  the  Greek  Church  in  Athens,  and  I 
have  heard  the  call  to  prayer  from  the  min- 
aret and  have  seen  devout  Moslems  prostrate 
in  worship  in  the  Mosque  of  St.  Sophia  in 
Constantinople.  I  have  studied  the  stolid 
faces  of  the  Chinese  in  their  Joss  House  yon- 
der and  I  have  seen  the  tear-stained  faces  of 
devout  Jews  who  were  pouring  out  their 
hearts  in  prayer  at  the  Jewish  Wailing 
Place  in  Jerusalem.  And  although  in  every 
case  the  mode  of  worship  and  the  language 
were  entirely  unlike  my  own,  I  felt  a  sense 
of  kinship  with  them  all  in  their  yearning 
for  the  sense  of  fellowship  with  the  Divine. 

[  148  ] 


i^te  €$mtt) 


How  incomplete  and  abnormal  I  should  feel 
if  I  had  no  part  whatever  in  that  hunger  of 
the  soulj  or  if  I  had  nowhere  declared  and 
recorded  my  attachment  to  the  great  Head 
of  my  church! 

Let  me  say  then  these  two  things  to  the  young 
men — first,  you  need  the  church.  It  is  the 
inner  principle  of  each  man's  life  which 
counts  much  more  than  the  passing  phases 
of  his  environment.  You  cannot  raise  grapes 
from  thorns,  nor  figs  from  thistles,  even 
though  you  plant  them  in  black  loam  ten 
feet  deep,  well-watered,  and  with  a  southern 
exposure.  It  cannot  be  done — the  inner  prin- 
ciple of  the  thorns  and  the  thistles  is  wrong ; 
it  cannot  be  made  to  issue  in  a  fruitage  of 
grapes  and  figs.  It  is  the  good  tree  which 
brings  forth  good  fruit  on  all  the  fields  of 
human  effort.  It  is  the  heart  made  right 
through  the  gospel  which  the  church 
preaches,  it  is  the  heart  made  right  by  Him 
who  is  the  great  head  of  the  church,  which 
makes  the  whole  life  right. 
Here    is    the    Sermon    on    the    Mount,    the 

[149] 


C^e  goiwg  pian'g  affair 

Magna  Charta  of  spiritual  privilege,  as  Ly- 
man Abbott  puts  it,  in  a  nutshell.  The  secret 
of  happiness  is  character — Blessed,  that  is 
to  say  happy,  are  those  who  are  gentle  and 
merciful,  sympathetic  and  aspiring,  peaceable 
and  pure.  The  secret  of  character  is  a 
certain  spirit  within — Seek  first  the  King- 
dom of  God  which  is  within  you ;  make  the 
tree  good  and  the  fruit  will  be  good.  This 
right  spirit  within  comes  by  knowing  the 
Father — Pray,  and  when  you  pray  say  "  Fa- 
ther in  heaven,  thy  kingdom  come ;  thy  will 
be  done  here  as  it  is  done  there.  Lead  us 
and  deliver  us  from  evil."  The  secret  of  hap- 
piness is  character ;  the  secret  of  character  is 
a  certain  spirit  within  and  that  spirit  is 
gained  by  knowing  the  Father  whom  Jesus 
Christ  revealed.  There  you  have  it  all  in  a 
nutshell. 

Your  surroundings  with  all  the  forces  they 
hold  have  a  certain  influence,  but  it  is  second- 
ary. You  have  all  seen  this — two  boats  sail- 
ing in  exactly  opposite  directions  with  the 
same  wind.    The  environment  was  the  same 

[150] 


i^fsj  e^uwl) 


for  both,  but  one  was  going  this  way  and  the 
other  that.  It  all  depends  on  the  set  of  the 
sails  and  the  purpose  of  the  man  at  the  helm. 
Let  the  Master  of  all  the  ships  which  sail  the 
high  seas  of  moral  effort  show  you  how  to 
rig  your  boat  and  set  your  sails  and  then 
under  His  direction  hold  the  rudder  true 
and  you  will  sail  strongly  and  securely  in  the 
right  direction,  no  matter  what  your  environ- 
ment may  be! 

"  One  ship  turns  east,  and  another  west 
With  the  self-same  winds  that  blow; 
'Tis  the  set  of  the  sails,  and  not  the  gales, 
Which  tell  us  the  way  to  go. 

"  Like  the  winds  of  the  sea  are  the  waves  of  fate, 
As  we  voyage  along  through  life; 
'Tis  the  set  of  the  soul  which  decides  the  goal, 
And  not  the  calm  or  the  strife." 

I  have  lived  long  enough  to  know  the  devil 
when  I  see  him.  I  have  seen  him  going  about 
seeking  what  he  might  devour  here  in  this 
town  as  he  is  doing  in  all  towns — and  finding 
it.  He  has  taken  many  a  young  fellow  from 
the   High   School  yonder  and   thrown   him 

[151] 


C&e  gowns  jman'js  affaft# 


down  in  uncleanness  and  dishonor — the  young 
fellow  was  too  weak  to  stand  up.  He  has  met 
many  a  young  man  in  business  life  and  pulled 
him  aside  into  dishonesty  and  deceit, — the 
young  man's  will  went  lame  just  at  the  wrong 
time.  He  has  taken  the  capacity  of  many  a 
young  man  for  the  higher,  finer  things  in  his 
home  life,  social  life,  religious  life,  and 
squeezed  it  all  out  of  him, — the  man  could 
not  seem  to  resist  the  encroachment  of  the 
lower  upon  the  higher. 

Let  me  say  to  you  right  here  that  not  a  man 
of  them  all  needed  to  go  down  in  moral  de- 
feat. He — the  same  One  who  said  "  On  this  I 
build  " — is  able  to  keep  anything  committed 
to  Him,  honesty,  integrity,  aspiration  for  the 
best!  In  His  fellowship  all  the  nobler  inter- 
ests of  your  life  are  entirely  safe.  You  can 
find  Him,  know  Him,  and  grow  to  be  like  Him 
if  you  will,  through  the  worship,  the  fellow- 
ship and  the  service  of  the  church  He  came 
to  build. 

You  need  it !  If  you  will  honestly  feel  the 
pulse  of  your  moral  life  and  take  the  tern- 

[152] 


^fe  C&urd) 


perature  of  your  enthusiasm  for  righteous- 
ness you  will  know  that  you  need  it  just  as 
you  know  that  you  need  food.  The  young 
man  who  sleeps  until  nine-thirty  Sunday 
morning,  then  stuffs  his  mind  full  of  a  bulky 
Sunday  paper,  crammed  with  matter  hastily 
written,  meant  to  be  hastily  read,  and  still 
more  hastily  forgotten,  not  a  line  of  it  above 
the  common-place  and  most  of  it  fathoms 
below ;  then  eats  a  big  dinner  at  one  or  two 
o'clock;  then  spends  the  afternoon  in  out- 
door sports  or  social  diversion ;  then  devotes 
the  evening  to  cards  or  light  chit-chat  with 
nothing  of  spiritual  aspiration  in  it, — the 
young  man  who  thus  allows  his  Sundays  to 
slip  through  his  fingers  with  nothing  delib- 
erately chosen  and  wisely  adjusted  to  make 
him  more  reverent,  more  aspiring,  more  un- 
selfish, more  resolute,  is  not  developing  the 
moral  fiber  he  needs.  He  may  or  may  not 
become  openly  immoral  in  the  years  ahead, 
but  at  best  he  is  so  much  dead  weight  to  be 
carried  along  by  the  more  aspiring  elements 
of  the  community. 

[153] 


C^e  goims  jwan'js  affair 

Take  the  words  of  Lecky,  the  historian,  who 
is  as  far  from  being  a  narrow  ecclesiastic  as 
any  man  you  can  name — "  What  institution 
is  there  on  earth,"  he  said,  "  which  is  doing 
as  much  to  furnish  ideals  and  motives  for  the 
individual  life  by  its  moral  appeal;  to  guide 
and  purify  the  emotions  through  its  well- 
appointed  worship ;  to  promote  those  habits 
of  thought  and  desire  which  rise  above  the 
things  of  earth;  to  bestow  comfort  in  old 
age,  in  sorrow,  in  disappointment;  to  keep 
alive  a  sense  of  that  higher  and  further  world 
to  which  we  go,  as  is  the  Christian  Church." 
You  need  all  that  —  claim  it  in  full  measure, 
genuinely  and  steadily  by  openly  sharing  in 
and  identifying  yourself  with  its  wholesome 
life! 

Take  the  voluntary  testimony  of  three  manly 
men,  —  Stanley,  the  intrepid  explorer ;  Bis- 
marck, the  resolute  statesman ;  Stevenson,  the 
splendid  writer;  none  of  them  by  his  calling 
professionally  pledged  to  sound  the  praises 
of  religion. 

Hear  Stanley  —  "  Lost  in  the  African  jungle, 

[  154  ] 


i^te  Cljmxl) 


constrained  at  the  darkest  hour  to  humbly 
confess  myself  helpless  without  God's  help,  I 
vowed  a  vow  in  the  forest  wilds  that  I  would 
confess  His  aid  before  men.  I  besought  Him 
to  give  me  back  my  people.  Nine  hours  later 
we  were  exulting  with  a  rapturous  joy.  I 
am  utterly  unable  to  attribute  our  salvation 
to  any  other  cause  than  a  gracious  Pro- 
vidence." 

Hear  Bismarck  —  "If  I  were  no  longer  a 
Christian  I  would  not  serve  the  King  another 
hour.  If  I  did  not  put  my  trust  in  God,  I 
should  certainly  place  none  in  earthly  mas- 
ters. If  I  did  not  believe  in  a  Divine  Provi- 
dence which  has  ordained  this  German  nation 
to  be  something  good  and  great,  I  would  give 
up  my  trade  as  a  statesman.  Deprive  me  of 
this  faith  and  you  deprive  me  of  my  father- 
land." 

Hear  Stevenson  — "  Of  that  great  change 
which  decided  all  this  part  of  my  life,  turn- 
ing me  from  one  whose  business  it  was  to 
shirk  into  one  whose  business  it  was  to  strive 
and  persevere,  it  seems  to  me  as  though  it 

[155] 


C^e  goung  jHan'js  affair 

had  all  been  done  by  some  one  else.  I  came 
about  like  a  well-handled  ship.  There  stood 
at  the  helm  that  Unknown  Steersman,  whom 
we  call  God."  These  manly  men  of  thought, 
of  action,  of  high  purpose,  needed  that  higher 
something.  You  need  it.  Every  man  needs 
it. 

The  other  thing  I  want  to  say  is — the  church 
needs  you.  The  color  of  life  with  you  is  red 
—  may  it  be  for  years  to  come !  We  want 
that  shade  here.  The  church  whose  prevail- 
ing color  is  blue,  deep  navy  blue  perhaps,  is 
doomed,  —  it  has  already  lost  its  power  of 
appeal  to  the  young,  and  the  end  of  its  use- 
fulness is  only  a  matter  of  time. 
"  Religion  is  not  a  funeral  announcement." 
There  are  religious  leaders  who  seem  to  be 
always  saying  —  "  Let  us  cry."  They  have 
gotten  the  wrong  phrase  and  the  wrong  mood. 
When  you  begin  to  talk  about  faith  and  God, 
do  not  turn  the  corners  of  your  mouth  down. 
Face  all  these  matters  as  naturally,  as  joy- 
ously, as  genuinely,  as  you  would  face  any 
other  interest  in  life. 

[156] 


^fg  C^urc^ 


This  is  the  time  for  you  to  be  a  Christian  and 
to  be  putting  in  the  best  service  of  your 
life.  The  impulses  of  the  heart  are  warmer, 
stronger  and  readier  now  than  they  will  be 
twenty  years  hence.  A  man  who  postpones 
becoming  a  Christian  until  he  has  one  foot 
in  the  grave,  usually  postpones  it  until  they 
are  both  there.  Do  it  now !  "  On  this  I  will 
build  "  —  and  the  corner  stone  of  His  con- 
fidence was  consecrated  youth ! 
Here  is  a  word  of  authority  and  of  ex- 
perience; it  comes  from  an  older  man,  but 
it  rings  true.  "  I  beseech  you,  men "  — 
brethren,  he  says,  but  it  is  all  the  same,  — 
"  I  beseech  you  men  by  the  mercies  of  God 
that  you  present  your  bodies  a  living,"  —  not 
decrepit,  nor  diseased,  nor  half  dead,  but  a 
"  living  sacrifice,  holy  and  acceptable  to  God 
for  this  is  your  reasonable  service."  And  so 
it  is !  You  would  feel  almost  ashamed  to  go 
to  your  Maker  offering  Him  the  core  of  your 
life,  all  the  best  parts  of  it  eaten  away  by  the 
lapse  of  unconsecrated  years.  Bring  it  with 
the  fullness  of  its  promise  and  strength  upon 

[157] 


C^e  goung  jftan'g  affaftjs 

it,  saying  "  Here  am  I,  use  me  to  make  the 
world  a  better  place  for  all  hands." 
-  You  say  that  you  are  not  good  enough  to 
join  the  church.  If  you  mean  by  that,  you 
are  openly  or  secretly  doing  what  you  know 
is  wrong  and  that  you  intend  to  keep  on,  you 
are  dead  right.  You  are  not  good  enough  — 
we  do  not  want  you  in  our  membership.  No 
church  does !  If  on  the  contrary  you  mean 
that  you  are  not  as  good  as  you  intend  to  be 
sometime,  that  you  are  striving  to  conquer 
temptation,  to  see  your  duty  steadily  and 
whole,  and  do  it,  that  you  intend  to  grow 
at  last  into  that  finer,  higher  manhood  you 
have  in  your  mind's  eye,  then  you  are  good 
enough.  The  church  reaches  out  a  long, 
strong  arm  to  welcome  you.  On  this  firm 
and  manly  purpose  He  will  build  individual 
character  and  the  better  world  that  is  to 
be. 

There  is  Some  One  waiting  for  the  response 
which  it  lies  within  you  to  make  at  once  if 
you  will.  My  college  mate,  living  now  in  New 
York,  tells  me  this  story.  He  knew  a  man  who 

[158] 


^te  c^utcty 


in  his  boyhood  grew  tired  of  home  and  ran 
away.  He  followed  the  sea  and  for  ten  years 
went  before  the  mast,  becoming  coarse,  hard 
and  brutal.  Never  once  in  all  that  time  did  he 
write  a  letter  home.  He  supposed  they  would 
give  him  up  as  dead.  Finally,  homesickness 
caught  him  and  he  resolved  to  return  to  his 
native  land.  He  sailed  into  the  great  harbor, 
and  then  took  a  skiff  and  rowed  across  to  the 
little  inlet  where  the  old  home  had  stood.  He 
wondered  if  they  were  all  dead.  He  was 
ashamed  to  be  seen  in  the  daytime,  and  waited 
for  nightfall.  He  then  rowed  toward  the  fa- 
miliar landing,  but  he  saw  a  light  and  some 
one  moving  on  the  shore.  He  did  not  want 
to  meet  strangers,  so  he  pulled  out  into  the 
bay  again.  He  came  back  at  ten,  but  the 
light  was  still  there.  He  rowed  off  and 
waited  until  eleven,  and  then  came  back,  but 
the  light  was  still  there  and  some  one  was 
trimming  it.  He  drew  near  to  the  shore, 
and  behold  it  was  his  father,  gray-bearded, 
weary-eyed,  heavy-hearted,  who  that  night 
and  every  night  for  the  ten  years  had  placed 

[159] 


C^e  goung  jttan'js  Slffaitjs 

a  lantern  to  guide  and  welcome  his  returning 
son,  for  whom  he  had  ever  watched  and 
prayed. 

God  is  like  that !  He  is  a  Father  and  no  child 
is  ever  lost  from  the  thought  of  His  infinite 
mind,  from  the  gracious  purposes  of  His  lov- 
ing heart !  He  waits  for  the  return  of  every 
soul  coming  up  to  Him  in  consecration  that 
He  may  build  each  life  into  His  gracious  plan 
to  make  this  world  a  splendid  section  of  His 
everlasting  kingdom ! 


UNIVERSITY    ) 


[160] 


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